












Merl of Medevon 


AN D 


OTHER PROSE WRITIESS, 


BY 




John Preston Campbell, 


AUTHOR OF 


The Peri’s Pardon,” “Queen Sylvia,” “The 
Summerless Sea,” 


~^AND OTHER POEMS.^ 




,0V 


CHICAGO: 

Rand, McNally & Co., Printers, 




ix 


\o 


O 


N 




COPYKIGHT, 1887, 

PY 

John Preston Campbele. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I. Merl of Medevon, 7 

II. Lululee, 65 

III. Monk Moda, 73 

IV. Merry May, 86 

V. Leah, Queen of Wonderland, .... 114 

VI. The White Witch of the 3Iountains, . . 118 

VII. Rome and Her Greatness, 122 


V 


TO MRS. M. L. WILLARD, 

THE FRIEND AND PLAYMATE OF MY YOUTH, 


THESE PROSE WRITINGS 
ARE VERY GRACIOUSLY INSCRIBED. 


C, 


INTRODUCTION. 


The Author may be permitted to say, that these prose writings 
are not published with the thought that they will gain a free 
passage on the stream of Time, and go floating down to pos- 
terity amid the glimmering gleams of their own brightness ; or, 
that the writer shall have attained immortality without another 
move in the world, after the printer’s last impress strikes these 
pages. They are published simply to gratify the earnest solicita- 
tion of friends, and to furnish the writer work until this mortal 
coil is shuflfed off and the soul confronts eternal things. 

The writer is aware that a fee simple title to fame is the price- 
less possession of but few, — few, indeed, as compared with the 
many who long to purchase, and who patiently urge on the weary 
pen, charmed by the sound of its own scribbling. It matters but 
little how gifted one may be, that one must have the patience to 
work and wait, investing a large amount of intellectual labor as 
the purchase price of immortality, in the literary world. 

Some are born to write, others learn to write, while more waste 
their mortal tenure without letting the world know they ever 
lived, by leaving 

A line to be read 
When they are dead. 

Thus it hath been, so it is, and most likely will be, till Gabriel 
calls attention to the crowning day, and chaotic confusion reigns. 
Of course, each writer’s writings will then be lost, but the soul 
will be the better for having left a read ble pen-mark on 
the ledger of life. 

I have written to be out of idleness, and publish to give the 
critics work. There is a vein in my nature which finds enjoy- 
ment in reading a rich lampoon, e’en though its poisoned point 
pierce my heart. And, as a matter of choice, I would rather be 
wounded by the shafts of sarcasm, in the literary arena of life. 


VI 


than forego the pleasure of seeing some egotistical bundle of 
brassy brain-work strut around lordly and lofty in his own 
estimation at having vanquished some timid quill offender on the 
field of Hard Fare. 

Coarse-minded mortals may drill themselves until they become 
quite tolerable critics ; but only those who possess the finer facul- 
ties of the soul can properly portray divine things, by dipping the 
pen of superior point into the celestial fount of God’s love. A 
rude and careless hand may rough the canvass, but only the finer 
touch of genius can bring out the painting aglow with the light 
of paradise. 

Some rays celestial may be found in these pages, some 
whisperings of the soul heard by ears attuned to heaven’s melody, 
and some sorrow softly flow, which may, in part, obscure the 
imperfections visible herein. But if, when the reader shall 
have read and closed the book, one better thought remains, the 
author will be more than rewarded for this labor of love kindly 
submitted. 

J. P. C. 

Abilene, Kau., Nov. 9, 1887. 


MERL OF MEDEFON. 


In the Rocky Mountains, near that part of the same 
:known as Central Park, lived, or lingered, during the latter 
part of the Eighteenth century, as the tradition goes, a 
specimen of the human family, known as Jepus Jarden, 
the white trapper, or by the shorter and less euphonious 
'Cognomen of “Jep’’ among his familiars. He was long 
•seen in and about that region, with traps, dogs and gun, 
dressed in skins and furs of the finest tanning and most 
'Caieful keeping. Death allowed him to remain unmo- 
lested for the space of near seventy summers and as 
many winteis, so far as the writer has been enabled to 
trace his career. 

He was a man rather above the ordinarv height* 
straight and upright in the figure of his person, with a 
broad and intellectual forehead, an eagle gray eye, with 
allowing beard of silvery whiteness (the latter part of his 
life) and curly flaxen hair, faded by the ravages of time. 
-A merry twinkle played about his eyes, and a sort of half 
laugh upon his lips gave him a cheerful, friendly appear- 
ance, except when in conflict (and he had many of them) 
with the red men of hostile tribes, the dangerous mount- 
aineers who roamed for booty, and the still more danger. 
'Cus inhabitant of that wild region known as the 
-grizzly bear.” 


8 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


His dwelling place was a cave under a mountain cliffy 
known as “ The Inaccessible Cliff of Medevon,” hid 
by deformed mountain shrubbery in the summer time, 
and quite buried under the snows in the winter months.- 
This habitation consisted of various neat, well-furnished 
rooms, stored with relics of the chase, trophies of the 
war-path, and precious gems culled from that rich region 
in various ways, which may be mentioned more particu- 
larly hereafter. 

The sole companions of his lodge were an Indian woman^ 
some twenty-five years of age when first taken to his- 
lodge (he being then about forty), and her daughter, at 
that time about one year old. They were said to be of 
the Pawnee tribe. 

The woman, or “ Anda” as she was called, was of fair,., 
very fair, complexion, with black eyes and a wealth 
of coal-black hair falling in long well-kept folds about her 
rounded shoulders. She was a woman of much more 
than ordinary intelligence, with a graceful physique and 
an expressive face. 

The daughter, Merl, of much the same complex- 
ion, was still fairer formed and more beautiful than her 
mother. Indeed, she was frequently called the beauti- 
ful Indian princess of the mountains.” She was rather 
above the ordinary height of her sex, with a form and 
figure that at once suggested refinement and culture- 
Her eyes were large, dark, and liquid looking, with an 
expression of mildness hid in their deep mystery, such a&- 
the black-eyed houris of Paradise have gained from asso- 
ciations in that celestial land; her forehead was of nature’s 
choicest mold, high and intelligent ; her nose was of as- 
delicate turn as that of any of the fair daughters of Eve,, 
and her mouth was possessed of that witchery of expres- 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


9 


sion which captivates at first glance the ardent admirer 
of beautiful women. Her long, dark tresses fell about 
shoulders and breast of peculiar loveliness ; her foot was 
as [finely fashioned as that of any lady who never stepped 
from the drawing-room carpet to do aught of servitude, 
and light as the fawn’s ; her dress was of the finest skins 
and softest furs, tanned and cured by skillful hands, orna- 
mented in a lavish manner with diamonds, pearls, beads 
and trinkets of gold, which flashed in the pure atmosphere 
and sunshine of heaven, as she wended along the way- 
walks and mountain passes, for pleasure or for profit, or to 
study God in nature; for this child of the red man’s was 
nature’s child, and she felt herself related to its system 
of change and progression. 

Of her father, nothing may be said at this time, for 
Merl had been kept, until her maturer years, quite ignorant 
of that father’s fate, thinking that he fell, a chieftain 
battling for the Sioux Indians, when she was a child, for 
so her mother had intimated, although she never had, in 
direct words, said as much. It was known to Merl, at a 
very young age, that the Sioux Indians were hostile to 
the Pawnees, and hence very slight misdirection caused 
her confiding mind to cling to the belief that the father, 
whom she had never seen to remember, had fallen, a& 
many victims had done, by the tomahawk or the scalp- 
inof knife. 

o 

One misty looking sunset, in the fall of the year 1769, 
or thereabout, Jep and Anda might be seen carrying a 
child (then little Merl), by turns, wrapped in furs of otter, 
along the valley and winding ridge-way that led to “The 
Inaccessible Cliff of Medevon” — inaccessible to any foot 
save Jep’s and those sharing his lodge. 

The- trapper seemed to step with a confident tread,. 


10 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


as though lie knew the ground; and well he might, for 
nearly his whole life, from boyhood up, had been spent 
in the wildest mountains of the Rocky Range, the deepest 
gorges and the most secluded passes of the broken bosom 
of the Western World. Prior to Anda’s coming, he had 
occupied this inaccessible lodge in the cliff, at intervals, 
during the recent winter months, and familiarized himself 
with its surroundings. Anda had never been there before, 
but they walked on as confidential friends walk earth’s 
ways and windings through. In his strong arms ho carried 
the child most of the way, while three faithful looking 
dogs, of the hound species, followed, with becoming 
decorum, as if trained to know their place and to appear 
well therein. Anda carried the trapper’s rifle and other 
accouterments of the chase. 

S!owly they wind up and on through narrow defiles and 
mountainous gorges, where tangled fern and hazelwood 
cover a blind and secret path- way leading to the lodge. 

Although the eye may not follow their windings, or 
take cognizance of all the steps necessary to gain that 
cliff, they are there at last and settled comfortably for 
the evening and indeed, for that matter, for years in the 
trapper’s lodge, which no ordinary capacity for comfort 
and enjoyable things had fitted up. 

Supper is prepared by the trapper’s hands, out of an 
ample supply of provisions purchased by Jep and laid in 
the lodge a few days prior thereto; for, although he could 
shoot at roe or doe or death-daring devil with a deadly 
aim, yet he was equally as handy in the pastry line of 
such a life, as any cook of the gentler sex could have 
been. Anda assists and looks upon his skill with an eye 
of satisfied composure and confiding contentment, while 
little Merl sleeps peacefully on a cot of skins before 


MEliL OF MEDEVOX. 


11 


a cheerful lire of the old-fashioned chimney kind. There 
was a large and friendly looking cat of the domesticated 
sort purring on the hearth, which consisted of flag- 
stones neatly 'arranged, as if by the skill of some 
artisan ; while around the walls, in proper order, were 
to be seen many trophies of the chase, reliquaries of 
Indian barbarism, as well as the most beautiful bead- 
work of that flnely gifted race in this direction. These 
spacious apartments had been furnished in rooms of 
natui’e’s mold (finely fitted and decked by the hand of 
art) in the very bowels of the mountain, with an entrance 
thereto so obscure and blinded that no curious eye had 
ever sought to penetrate therein, nor venturous foot to 
enter; and it was all the better for the trapper and his 
associates, for had they once been entered by others, and 
that intelligence been communicated to the outward 
world, much that was so valuable there would have been 
pillaged or rudely ransacked, against even the strong- 
right arm of Jep and his deadly aim; for he never failed 
an oifender to punish or a friend to reward, he never sped 
a bullet from that unerring rifle but to hit its mark. 

So expert had he become from long years in these 
mountain defiles that had a hostile Indian, or a still more 
hated enemy of the white race, crossed his path at night, 
his eagle eye would detect the track in his morning tour 
to traps, to mines, to lawns where the antelope peace- 
fully fed, or to brightest lakes where the web-footed fowls 
of heaven were wont to gather amid the summer’s prime 
for food or play, or where the mountain goat climbed 
the highest peaks and bounded free-footed and far from 
cliff' to cliff. 

This home in the mountains, this serene retreat, was 
also a kind of reading-rocan, for the tastes of its inmates 


12 


MERL OE MEDEYON. 


had furnished it with the best books of prose and 
poetry that could be purchased from Eiastern booksellers, 
by original orders for shipment thither, by scouting 
parties, or laid down at a point on Bitter Creek known as 
“ Lunday’s Leghorn House,” which was a kind of central 
trading station for all classes, who paid his price and 
kept their mouths shut in doing so, for it was customary 
in those days to charge a customer one dollar for speak- 
ing to him; now the shopman politely petitions the cus- 
tomer to be permitted to speak to him as to the quality of 
his goods and wares. So that, as the years sped on, little 
Merl became a great favorite of the trappers, and her 
mother spared no pains to educate her daughter, and to give 
her information as to the occurrences of the world without. 

She was a great student, both of books and of nature. 
Some of her rarest lessons she would learn on a mild morn- 
ing dawn or amid the evening twilight tide, with her painted 
bow and arrows, tipped with silver, strolling along some 
secluded, oft-frequented way, where birds of plumage 
bright perched upon the foliage surrounding some tran- 
quil lakelet’s side or laughing lawn, where the mountain 
herds would nibble at her hand; for although she carried 
a bow and arrows, she never used them on anv of the 
feathered songsters or members of the animal kingdom. 
She simply carried them as a sort of precaution against 
the uncourteous advances of some rough spirits, garbed in 
mortality, who strolled across that region in quest of game 
or painted for the war-path. But it was Merl’s greatest 
wish and care to avoid sending an arrow at any form of 
man, even to protect her own safety, and she never did 
unless some perpendicular mountain wall barred her 
flight from an offending foe, for were there an escape- 
way, no foot was fleet enough to keep pace with hers. 


MERL OF MEDEYON. 


13 


On such walks, nature seemed to breathe to her half- 
ungelic soul a diviner melody, in that hush of her wild- 
wood, than mortal ever heard amid the city’s din or cul- 
tivated rural retreat. She often thought unseen mount- 
ain spirits accompanied her on her walks, and opened 
avenues, with golden keys, that communicated with the 
spirit world, whereby she caught glimpses of a beautiful 
city which duller eyes hath never seen. She frequently 
was called “ Mild-eyed Merl,” and many who had 
chanced to see her from a distance, sought nearer 
approach, but she always fled light-footed as the fawn or 
fleet as the roebuck bounding from crag to crag. 

Her timidity and extreme beauty oft led adventurous 
wanderers to spend hours and whole days seeking to fol- 
low her footsteps and learn something more of the 

Indian Princess.” But vain were all delays for that 
purpose. 

Some thought her a nymph, a naiad or a sprite, while 
others averred she was human, from having frequently 
seen her tracks in the snow or softened places around 
the lily pools where she loved to linger. And not 
unfrequently would pass some sentimentalist thinking of 
a drooping love at home, back in the East, and would 
oatch a glimpse of this mountain nymph, amid the sun- 
set’s gold, straying by some lakelet’s side, which seemed 
like shadow of an angel cast within the water’s fall, so 
tranquil and so still. And not unfrequently did it hap- 
pen that one glimpse of so much loveliness disturbed the 
dreamer and his fair dream of those at home, causing a 
tumult of passion to arise within his bosom, which the 
mad disappointment of her flight troubled the sorer. 

For weeks, and even for months, some ardent souls 
have been known to forsake all other objects of life, and 


14 


MEKL OF 3IEDJ:Y()X. 


linger secreted, as they supposed, that they might surprise 
and arrest her flight by physical restraint, could they only 
get near enough to do so. But vain was their stay, for 
some witchery caused her to avoid their bound ; and if 
they obtained a momentary glimpse of that admired 
being who was tearing their souls asunder, it was like the 
glimpse which the mind’s eye may sometimes catch of the 
passage of the dove of peace, amid the darkness of a 
drt^adful day, or that inspired look the soul sometimes is 
permitted to take of the bright vistas of heaven, in the 
shortest possible time. So great, however, was their 
infatuation that they would go days without eating (save 
the few berries at hand) and sleep a kind of dreamful 
sleep, meditating about beauty budding into womanhood 
(for now she was something past sixteen), and this, too, 
on the hardest ledge of rocks or most extended cliff or 
exposed point of danger, in order to be at the place 
where they vainly supposed she would pass, ere the 
coming of Aurora tinted the hills with gold, and painted 
the hues of heaven on leaf and lawn, on shrub and 
blossom, on lake and dell, for the diviner witchery of 
mankind. 

'She never was seen but that she was most beautifully 
arrayed, in tasteful costume, gilt with bead and gold 
work of rarest art. Strange, you say, that such a fair 
angelic form delighted to lose her life to the gay fashion- 
able world, within those mountain defiles, which must be 
so lonely to the lovely ? Nay, nay, it is not strange ; for 
she walketh and talketh with the nine Muses, the 
heavenly choristers, and tho'^e spirits bright of the Eden 
land, which join earth’s purest mortals as they walk in 
silent reverie amid the celestials, for be it known to you, 
my reader, that God’s finest fibered souls on His footstool. 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


15 


frequently walk in hallowed bliss by the side of some 
loved visitant from beyond the flowers and the blooms of 
earth. 

Meantime, as the happy seasons went, gliding like 
silver mists before the sun’s risen rays, Anda in the 
lodge pursued her domestic duties, making it a cheerful 
home for child and man to return to at the nitjht-fall 
when the shade of the foreappointed shadow, which we 
all must enter, settles darkling round. Merl pursued hrr 
pleasure paths, for pastime and for the study of the great 
mystery which opened about her — of leaf and tt*ee, flower 
and virre, ledge and lawn, bird and beast, lacking that 
intimate contact with mankind and their treachery, which 
might have turned her pure and innocent thoughts ta 
thoughts of sin and guile. 

The trapper, faithful to his tr-ade, went his daily lounds^ 
securing furs, and golden ingots from unexplored mines,, 
beautiful moss agates and beads of amber fr-om friendly 
Indians, with whom he exchanged his skins sometimes, 
obtaining all sorts of wonderful things for the adorning 
of his lodge and the gratification of its inmates. He 
bought books quite fr-equently, thereby adding to a well- 
stocked library of every variety for their mutual gr-atifi- 
cation and improvement. Indeed, around his homo 
seemed to linger the blest spirits of peace and love. 

Was he married to Anda ? say you. Not as modern 
marr’iages are made. Was he guilty of any improprie- 
ties in thus living there? If he was, the sin be his, 
which he shall answer for. But true it is, never was 
happier home surrounded by all the safeguarxls and restric- 
tions of the law, which, in its rigid formality, sometimes 
chills all the love out of our homes and causes the heart 
to droop and pine for an object on which to lavish its 


16 


MEKL OF MEDFVOjN". 


friendly affections. That Anda and Jep were the best of 
fri(nids, having that mutual conffdence and strange esteem 
for each other that would have led either to sacrificed 
their lives for the other, is a truth beyond contradiction; 
and that Merl was loved and beloved by both is also true, 
she loving her mother as a dear dutiful daughter should 
do, and the white man, Jep, as truly as ever a child loved 
a father, for he was the soul of kindness to her. Merl had 
never known any other father save the trapper. Her own 
father passed from this earthly career before she was old 
enough to realize the fact or remember his features. 
How could law and civilization have improved such a 
home? And yet it is the law, administered in a civil age, 
that does improve our homes. 

Jep’s life was a pleasant one in the lodge, on the chase, 
and while tending his traps; but not always so pleasant 
when hostile hands were raised against his, out from the 
shelter of home, either by the red man or some hated 
white enemy ; for lives were taken and blood was spdled 
by his strong right arm and unerring aim. 

Bloody and desperate, indeed, were his conflicts with 
the Sioux Indians, the Cheyenne Indians, the Cherokee 
Indians, and the Arapahoe Indians, as well as now and 
then some straggler from another tribe. 

In short, the Indians as a race, wherever Jep’s name 
was named, at once indicated a deep-felt hatred, and a 
revengeful malice toward the white trapper. And 
why shouldn’t they ? But of this hereafter. Anda’s dead 
chief had rendered signal service to their tribes in his 
lifetime, which, by a combination of strange coincidences, 
terminated that life, so that whenever one of the tribes 
mentioned crossed his path, there was strife, strife unto 
death. And the strar.ger it may seem because of the kind 


MEEL OF MEDEVOK. 


17 


countenance, and domestic benevolence of Jep. He was, 
indeed, a friend in peace, but a worse than enemy in war, 
when a painted imp stood before him in hostile attitude. 
On such occasions all his gentleness left him with the 
speed of a lightning’s flash, and the terrible malignity of 
an awful nature asserted itself. He had, on many occa- 
sions, lost his life, remote from friends, were it not for 
his superior courage, agility, and unerring stroke. 

Not like his enemies of the war path, did he resort to 
the barbarous custom of scalping fallen victims, and 
wearing the bloody trophies as so many badges of honor; 
for had he done so he would have been loaded down with 
the many scalps which were his of right. But often to 
Indian eyes was seen the fearful work of Jep’s quick knife, 
or the devastating ravages of his deadly aim, on some 
fallen chief of great renown or a brave warrior; for he 
scorned to aim at a dull, dead mark, and always selected 
a shining one, “the better to nerve his heart for conflict,” 
as he would say. In conflict, desperate and deadly, he 
seemed sustained by the warlike spirit of Mars, for no foe 
could long stand before his activity in dealing death to 
dastard that crossed his path. He was known near and 
far as “ the deadly white Jep,” and he moved with a cau- 
tious, cat-like step in coming and going. 

For weeks, at times, he would not return to his lodge, 
when desperate work was to be done. But Anda and Merl 
knew he would be back, for he bore a charmed life, and 
no combinations of deadly hostility could stay him in his 
path. Indeed, his fame was such that the Indians believed 
“ the great spirit fights with Jep,’’ and the commonalty 
of them shunned him, except now and then when some 
leader, bolder and braver than the rest, sought to wreak 
vengeance for some fallen friend, or, when numbers of 
2 


18 


MERL OF MEDEVOIS^. 


them would plan and plot to take his life by acting in 
concert. 

He wore no coat of mail or shield of defense. His 
defensive and aggressive armor consisted in a steady hand 
and a true eye and desperate activity when Death draws 
his dagger. 

Many, very many, times had he rescued his life on the 
edge of the death line from some giant grizzly bear’s em- 
brace, only by the most superhuman efforts and undaunted 
bravery indeed. It seemed that Jep was not born to die 
by nature’s dogs or her animal kings in those days ; 
whose history, if preserved and properly penned, would 
present a thrilling record for posterity to peruse. 

It is from rumor only and tradition’s treasure-house that 
the writer has gathered sufficient data concerning Jep and 
the inmates of his gilded lodge to weave this web of 
darkness, interspersed with threads of silver and golden 
trimmings of truth, that from oblivion’s record, dead and 
dying as it is, the author has been able to gain informa- 
tion concerning “ The Beautiful Indian Princess, Merl of 
Medevon,” to set forth in a feeble way some of the 
graces, goodness, and rare accomplishments of this dark- 
eyed lady, born of as royal blood as any of her fair-faced 
sisters. 

When her song, at eventide, floated out on the stillness 
of a dying day the very birds ceased their melodious 
strains, thrilled with the music of her soul ascending to 
the gates of God. Her voice was of seraphic mellowness, 
with a cadence as pure and finely modulated as ever 
musician possessed, and a rich sweetness of surpassing 
rareness. She played the lute with tender touch, which 
always called Love’s fairies around her, with their quips 
and quirks, and shining wings, grown golden in the rays 


MERL OF MEDEVOlsr. 


19 


of the fading day. She was the possessor of such a won- 
derful musical talent that it gave her a sort of charmed 
queenship over the birds of the air, and all the harmless 
forest kind; for very many times she would strike a strain 
that would call the feathered warblers about her, and set 
the assembled goats, antelopes, elks, rabbits, squirrels, 
and all the fairy kind moving in an ecstacy of delight. 

Those sweet concerts never brought a tiger, grizzly or 
any harmful animal there. And was a human foot 
approaching, stealthily from the cover of some secluded 
path, she seemed to possess the divining thereof, and 
would wave her assembled auditors back to the forest 
again, retiring in silence from the place, which bewildered 
the intruder all the more; at hearing the distant cadences 
of her song or harp echoing and re-echoing through the 
canyons and up the gulches, over the mountain peaks 
away. 

Oft repeated efforts, on the part of some local trappers 
and quasi settlers, failed to gain any vantage ground 
where they might gloat, with greedy eyes on the coveted 
fair one, so that they had wisely desisted from attempting 
a surprise, except on very rare occasions, indeed, when 
their longings to capture this Indian princess of beauty 
would get the better of their judgment and prompt them 
to action. But she was guarded by some Ariel kind, and 
always sought safety in time to avoid their vigilance. 

There was, however, one young cavalier, grand and 
honorable looking, whom her eyes had seen on several 
occasions, when her heart but slightly prompted her will 
to flee. 

He was her senior some two or three years, tall and well 
formed, with light colored wavy hair, a moustache some- 
what of the auburn hue, mild hazel eyes, and a clear, well 


20 


MEEL OF MEDEVON. 


defined face, and with all, a bearing such as no lady of 
the King’s court had ever flown from, and many of them 
had Rodero Wilkson seen, for that was his name. 

He was spending the summer season of 1787 in the 
mountains, simply for pastime and for pleasure, being 
possessed of fortune wherewith to indulge his wishes. He 
delighted in the chase, as all people of English descent do, 
and he had his hounds and hawk, well trained and under 
complete control. He sought for game, mostly of the 
feathered kind, which was somewhat distasteful to Merl, 
as she loved to look on the forest featherlings unharmed 
and in their native element. 

As she had noticed his graceful bearing and manly 
beaming eye, she would say to herself, “ How can such a 
light-hearted, kindly looking face take delight in seeing 
the warblers of the forest die?” But, with all, she was 
wont to retreat slowly when he approached, and like a 
true gentleman, that he was, he never attempted to fol- 
low her retreating steps. 

Her visits to that part of the park, and of the grassy 
dells which surrounded lovely silver seeming lakes, be- 
came more frequent, and it seemed, too, that Rodero 
found game more plenty there; for hardly a day passed 
that she didn’t get a glimpse of him, and he of her in that 
locality. 

She thought he looked with admiring eyes; for she had 
read of love, if she never had before known the coy visit- 
ant, and somehow he seemed to be a true interpreter of 
nature, and the actions of her fairest forms; for he thought 
those dark, black, beaming eyes, expressed what Merl’s 
lips had not found words to tell. 

Reader, they were in love, deeply in love, and were 
seeking some incidental excuse to make the same more 


MEEL OF MEDEVO]^-. 


21 


fully known to each other — it came, as all such chances 
come. 

One beautiful eventide, when she had been gathering 
lilies, in the light of the sun’s departing rays, and when 
he had been musing of flowers and of fair things, they 
met by a little lakelet’s side. 

She didn’t flee. 

He didn’t advance till answered, as he said, “ Fair one 
who and what art thou? ” 

She replied, “ Monsieur, my name is Merl. ” 

He approached and took her by the hand, and there, 
reader, the first kiss of love was given and repaid; for 
there was nothing artful or coquettish in her nature; her 
soul had found its own true mate, and his the Eden dove 
of his search. That each belonged to a different race was 
not thought of, as a hinderance to the exercise of the pure 
affections of the soul; for angels gathered around them and 
Cupid’s fairies were delighted then. 

They talked of many things. She admired his hounds, 
his hawk, his gilt and sable sash. He thought her the 
most beautifully arrayed being that his eyes had ever 
beheld, in palace or in hall; and as to her features, they 
were divine, and her voice, though slightly, very slightly, 
modulated by the Indian dialect, yet it was sweet and 
finely accented and tender in the extreme; and carried 
with its very utterance a bewitching lisp of love, which 
set Rodero’s soul aflame with the divine passion which 
the gods of ancient fable possessed in such an eminent 
degree when they became enamored of the daughters of 
men — when there was uninterrupted communication 
between earth and the fair fields of paradise, years and 
years ago. 

They lingered till the shadows fell, on that first sweet 


22 


MERL OF MEDEVO]Sr. 


trance of love which we are wont to retain such vivid 
memories of through all of our subsequent lives. The 
dogs, impatient of delay, gave the first warning to that 
loving pair, that the night was setting in, by manifest- 
ing a restlessness which the skillful training of Rodero 
had taught them when danger or darkness was approach- 
ing. 

They wend the path along, talking as only lovers talk, 
till arrived in the valley below the lodge, when Merl sig- 
nified her wish to go thither alone. Rodero very gracious- 
ly granted the privilege. He wouldn’t intrude beyond 
her wish, for worlds, believing that where the wills are 
crossed, there vanishes Love and all his Cupids. 

The tender words of parting said, and a promise passed 
to meet again; Merl wended the secret pathway to the 
lodge, and the young English cavalier journeyed to his 
stopping place, at the “ Lunday Leghorn House,” some 
distance down the mountain’s brow. His heart was 
light, for love visions lighted it. 

“ You are late, my dear?” said Anda. 

“Yes, mamma. I was studying the stars, and God’s 
love messengers as they go up and down the golden lad- 
der from earth to heaven.” 

No word of caution, no censure, no frowning of reproval 
was ever given to Merl by either inmate of the lodge: it 
mattered not when she came or when she went, for they 
believed her accompanied by unseen guardians of God’s 
goodness, that would shield her from all harm. 

The trapper, in from a wearisome jaunt through mount- 
ain defiles, tangled tarns, and o’er lofty table-lands, they 
spent a pleasant evening together, reading, romping, and 
chatting, as domestics do where no reserve or cold for- 
mality is found. 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


23 


To look in upon that group, amid the quiet of a lovely 
eventide, one would think them stray wanderers from the 
skies, alighted now on earth, for a little space, to rest their 
weariness, and to revive their love affections for each 
other. Indeed the cat, large, homelike, and kind, seemed 
one of them, and never strayed away to vex himself, as 
many simple-minded felines do. Fox and geese, crib- 
bage, chess, checkers, and cards were used, as well as 
many other little harmless recreations, which MerPs mirth- 
ful mind had suggested, were indulged in. when 

the parting hour came for retirement, Merl kissed her 
mother a sweet “good-night,” and pressed Jep’s hand in 
token of affection, which thrilled his manly face with a 
sort of love-light, glorious and grand, and as Merl donned 
her night apparel, and pressed the comforting folds of her 
couch, she said a prayer, which the angel keeping the 
gate of gold handed in to the Lord of the City Celestial 
with radiant countenance; and that Ruler of the skies dis- 
patched, on noiseless wing, a heavenly-instructed messen- 
ger to bear the boon of peace to her breast. 

Fair forms there are on earth, and beautiful pictures of 
home life, but none fairer or more beautiful than MerPs 
was as she lay amid the snowy folds of a stainless couch, 
in her own apartment, which, lit by the feeble moonlight 
rays, that fell through a skylight of transparent glass 
above, showed at once a taste and refinement in the beau- 
tifying of her rooms which so many of our homes lack. 

Rich pictures, frescoed walls, softest carpets, and folds 
of rarest velvet fell about her there, with pictures of her 
own painting, which might have been envied by imperial 
painters of the olden time. 

Merl was an artist, with all of her other accomplish- 
ments, of much beauty and delicacy of touch, and she 


24 


MERL OF MEDEYON. 


possessed numberless musical instruments, on which she 
performed divinely. The piano, the harp, melodeon, lute, 
and the tambourine, as well as smaller harmonics, were of 
her possessions. And oft she woke some holy flow of soul 
by the cadences which they discoursed under her trained 
hand. 

But now she slept, absent from her harp, a beautiful, 
peaceful sleep, perchance dreaming of the greeting at the 
lake, the tender words of affection spoken by Rodero, and 
their mutual love. 

She awoke just as Aurora was tipping the hills with 
gold and gracing the groves with the glory of her coming. 

She went out into the balmy airs, and in joyful mood 
held a reverie, thinking of God, His angels, and the 
beauties of mountain, dell, and stream: hearing the songs 
of the forest warblers, and seeing the harmless furry kind 
that skipped about her pathway. 

She returned, invigorated and refreshed, to exchange the 
kind morning salutations which the inmates of the lodge 
always observed, and to partake of a bountiful breakfast, 
prepared by the twain, who seemed as one in all their 
wishes, likes, and wants. 

Hitherto, Merl’s life had been joyful: she had never 
known disappointment, no cloud of sorrow had ever set- 
tled in the fair horizon of her hope, which beamed so 
brightly about her. But changes came, as they come to 
all things mortal, bringing regrets to those who don the 
habiliments of decay and dreariness to many minds ere 
the close of life, that seems so mirthful at its morn. 

But change was not now in Merl’s case. She was 
doomed to dream on of the brightness of earth for a time, 
and sip the pleasures of love from that bewitching chal- 
ice stirred by a divine talisman: for she and Rodero often 


MERL OF MEDEYON. 


25 


met, lingering long ere the parting, and loved as none 
but lovers do. He found that a strong passion had pos- 
sessed his breast; she found that the fount of love had 
been stirred to its very depths, and soon they learned 
that it would be dangerous and deathly to cease to love 
each other, or to strive against the holy passion, given by 
God to turn mortals of different sexes to each other. 

The days sped on, the months ripened into seasons; for 
now, Merl was a beautiful, stately lady of twenty years. 

Rodero, true as ever lover was, had spent much time 
with Merl, and they, long since, had pledged the plighted 
word, and now had come the season for their nuptials — 
yes, for their nuptials; for, reader, as wild a passion will 
possess the human soul for fair forms of a different race, 
as for those of its own, and, indeed, some times more so. 

A grand wedding had been arranged for at the lodge ; 
everything was in readiness for the occasion. No guests 
were to arrive, it is true, save a holy friar of God, who 
administered to weary pilgrims wherever he chanced to 
pass them by; and he was sworn to secrecy, and, as a 
further precaution, he was not to be admitted farther than 
the outward entrance to the lodge ; for the splendors of 
the palace within might tempt the cupidity even of a 
pilgrim on the pathway to the eternal world, might excite 
the avarice even of a liveried saint of the celestial line, 
and cause the sandaled feet of righteousness to stumble 
and to fall by the way. 

The morning dawned fair and beautiful. Merl was 
arrayed more gorgeously than she had been in all her life 
before. She waited, expectant for his coming. 

The friar was there at the hour of nine a. m. exact ; but 
Rodero, the expected bridegroom, came not. Merl grew 
impatient. What could it mean ? 


26 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


Ten o’clock came, no footstep approached, eleven and 
twelve ; she became frantic with alarm. 

Jep tried to soothe her saying, ‘‘ that some unforeseen 
delay keeps him, but he will soon be here.” The old 
priest prayed and solaced by turns, with the assurance 
that “ God doeth all things well.” Anda tried to comfort 
her child, as mothers do, but in vain ; she persisted that 
she “had seen a vision, but a few hours since, in which 
two stalwart, soulless, Sioux Indians, had basely mur- 
dered her Rodero on his way to her bridal bower, and 
now he lies stark and dead without a friendly hand to brush 
the death damp from his brow.” 

Alas for Merl, her vision was all too true ; for Jep, 
hastening away to make search for the missing bride- 
groom, found him stark and dead at the base of the cliff, 
within half a mile of the lodge, shot in the breast with an 
arrow ; throat most fearfully lacerated, and “scalped as 
the red dogs always do their work.” 

Jep bore the cold corpse to a secluded shelter, and 
there covering it with Rodero’s own mantle, hastened 
back to the lodge, saying to the man of God, “We will 
have no need of thee to-day; Rodero hath been basely 
murdered ; the body lies in the cypress grove by the 
spring; haste thee, holy friar, to the village, and see that 
the body is properly buried, while I avenge the atrocious 
deed.” 

The good dervis wended from the outer porch, crossing 
himself with “ God’s will be done,” and a solemn “ amen.” 

The trapper went into the lodge where he found Merl 
as pale as death. She read in his very countenance the 
doom of her lover, for a cloud of vengeance had settled 
on his brow which was fearful, and most awful in its 
gloominess. 


MEEL OF MEDEVOIN^. 


27 


Merl was the first to speak. “ I knew it. Where did 
they kill him ? ” 

Jep answered : ‘‘At the base of the cliff, and as God 
lives, they shall die before a trap is tended or an act of 
kindness done. I know their mark, and well have they 
left it on his lacerated form.” The last words were lost 
to Merl’s ears, for she had fainted almost to death, and 
had been borne to a lounge by Anda. The trapper kissed 
her, bade “good-day” to Anda and left the lodge with 
dogs and gun, three in number; they sallied forth on a 
terrible hunt. 

Jep’s first precaution was to go to the spot where 
Rodero had been killed, at the base of the cliff, and take 
his bearings. 

He spent some time there examining the ground, the 
grass, the leaves, and all within the range of his eye. 
Then, seemingly satisfied, he cautiously started, as trap- 
pers start on the trail where desperate game is to be 
sought. 

The dogs, obedient to the motion of their master’s 
hand, followed, one behind the other, with a cat-like step. 
He was on a fresh trail, a trail made by two Indians only a 
short time since, and, should he overtake the game, his good 
rifle would dispatch the leader “Talaqua,” (for Jep knew 
his mark), and his two never failing revolvers, of six good 
loads each, would send his chosen brave to the borders of 
“the happy hunting ground” without warning or prepa- 
ration, other than a fair fight, for Jep loved to be manly 
even in the death strife. 

The trail ran toward the Sioux country, which was then 
the Black Hill region, lying east and north of Central Park. 

The hounds were strong, athletic, and fleet of foot, and 
true as ever dogs were to the will of a master. 


28 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


The Indians were of that race who are large, sinewy, 
and strong, so that Jep might not hope to overtake them, 
for some days did they continue their course uninter- 
ruptedly, and they were likely to do so, for well they knew 
the avenging hand of Jep would be raised against them, 
but, armed as they were, with bows and arrows, toma- 
hawks, and scalping knives, and two against one, they 
didn’t greatly fear him ; and, at night, one could sleep 
while the other kept watch without any fire, while Luna,, 
queen of night, held reign over the wilds of the Indian 
as well as the haunts of civilized man. 

Not so with Jep, he was alone and if he slept no human 
sentinel remained at his post, but there was a watcher 
“Bango” the leader of the three hounds, that never failed 
to alarm him when danger was at hand; and “ Dingle” 
and “Dip,” his companions, were equally vigilant when a 
foe was approaching; so that when the darkness settled 
down upon them, Jep wrapped his hunting-cloak about 
him and sought a night’s repose on the bracken, which 
was interrupted at times; but, in the main, he felt refreshed 
as he pursued the trail, when the earliest streak of light 
in the East allowed. 

He found, after two hours’ walk, where the pursued had 
camped for the night ; so that he judged they were then 
some six or seven miles in the advance, and that, by 
superhuman effort, he might be able to overtake and leave 
their “ pesky hides ” outside of the Indian village to 
which they were fleeing. So he increased the rapidity of 
his steps. 

Bango, Dingle, and Dip raised their ears and followed 
at a brisker step. Jep’s strides were hurriedly but cau- 
tiously taken, for he felt the thrill of revenge pulsating 
in his breast. 


MEEL OF MEDEVOIN^. 


29 


The forenoon passed ; Jep stopped not for food or rest, 
but kept on at an increased pace till near the middle of 
the afternoon when the dogs became quite impatient and 
Jep discovered that he was in the vicinity of the game. 
So leaving the trail and taking a ravine, around to the 
right, he sped away like the wind, in order to head them off 
and meet them face to face, and not strike a foe in the back. 

For some three miles he continued in this way, when, 
suddenly turning to the left, he bore in the direction of 
the trail of the retreating Indians, but crossed it not ; so 
that now he knew he was in advance of them and he pre- 
pared his weapons for use ; raising his finger to Bango, in 
a cautioning attitude, they paused for the first time since 
the morn, in the shelter of some mountain shrubs, not far 
from the foot-hills approaching the plains. 

Here they waited but a few minutes when Jep’s quick 
eye beheld the red devils approaching, Talaqua in the rear, 
the brave ahead. 

With nerves of iron and breast of steel, Jep waited till 
they were within five rods of his concealment, then, 
instantly stepping out, he shouted, Draw, red devils, 
Jep’s eye is on you.” 

Quick as a flash their arrows were at their bow-strings, 
but Jep’s more hasty rifle brought the brave to earth with 
a ball in his breast and his revolver crippled the right arm 
of Talaqua, who rushed with the tomahawk in his left 
hand like an infuriated fiend on his foe, and, perchance, 
had dispatched Jep, were it not for the dogs, two of which 
were holding the wounded brave down, while the other 
(Bango) sprang at the Indian’s throat and felled him to 
the earth in an instant, when the shining knife of Jep 
sent his treacherous soul over the river of Rakes which 
the wicked Indians cross. 


30 


MEKL OF MEDEVOIS^. 


The dogs had torn tlie brave’s throat so that he died in 
a few minutes. 

Jep said, in a subdued tone, “poor Rodero, thy death 
is avenged. Merl, I’ve kept my oath.” 

He lingered long enough in pensive mood, musing over 
the fallen Indians, to know that they were dead. Then 
he said, “ Talaqua thou hast often crossed my path ; the 
mark of thy terrible tomahawk hath become familiar to 
my eye, which thou hast so often left on the fallen victims 
of thy hate. Many, very many times, hast thou sought to 
intercept my steps and bar my way with death’s avenging 
stroke, but never have we met before in deadly strife, nor 
shall we meet again until we meet at the judgment bar of 
God, and He be Judge between us there.” 

So saying, he turned him nearly round and took the 
backward course, but not the exact line which he had 
come, for fear of meeting other foes which this day’s 
work might have put upon the trail. 

He wended on till night-fall, when, discovering a mount- 
ain goat at a convenient shot, he felled it. 

Hastening thither, it soon furnished a feast for the 
almost famished dogs, as well as ample for the trapper’s 
repast, which his hasty knife had severed, and which he 
had retained. He waited till the dogs were through with 
their evening meal and then bent his steps onward to a 
gulch where he found some ledging rocks that would con- 
ceal a fire from unfriendly eyes. 

Here he soon had his venison broiling over a cheerful 
little fire of coals. An ample supper supplied the trap- 
per’s needs, he withdrew from the fire some distance and 
laid himself down to rest. 

He soon fell asleep and slept as peacefully and as inno- 
cently as one at home who hath never known what sin or 
murder is. 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


31 


His faithful dogs kept watch, and, about three o’clock 
in the morning, Bango’s low moan of alarm, close to the 
trapper’s ear, brought him instantly to his feet with his 
accoutrements on, for he never took off his trappings when 
on the trail or track of death. 

His hasty hand grasped his ready rifle, and, with the 
speed of the wind, man and dogs flew up the mountain 
side seeking shelter from five red devils who were dis- 
charging arrows at the retreating form which, somewhat 
favored by the darkness, remained uninjured. 

Jep, turning, sent the foremost of the gang to his long 
home by a shot from his trusty rifle, which raised a howl 
as from the damned in hell. 

On, on and on, in the race of death, he flew, loading 
his rifle as he went, which soon tumbled another from a 
cliff to the gulch below, as dead as death is. This w^as 
repeated till but two were left, they began a retreat in 
much confusion. 

Jep commenced the advance. The order of things was 
reversed ; only a few more flying steps were taken when 
a fourth Indian bit the dust at the unerring crash of Jep’s 
rifle. The fifth and last one of the gang had sense enough 
to know that flight was death, and that to resist could be 
no more, so he wheeled on a kind of angle, thereby 
intending to encounter Jep with his tomahawk ; but the 
agility of the trapper was too much for him, for, although 
they were not more than three rods apart, the moonlight 
gave the trapper’s trained eye a hasty sight over the 
barrel of one of his revolvers which was as deadly as was 
his rifle but not as sure of aim. 

This was no stray shot. It did its work well. The 
fifth and last Indian had gone to be judged by the Great 
Spirit of the happy hunting grounds. 


32 


MEEL OF MEDEVOJN^. 


But hardly had Jep’s last unerring aim been effectual 
when one of the fallen foe, whom Jep felled on his hasty 
run and whom he had supposed was dead, which lay 
within six foot of where the trapper stood, with the activ- 
ity of a fiend of hell, sprang to his feet and gave a fearful 
leap towards Jep, bringing down his scalping knife with 
the lightning-like stroke of lurid electricity, and which 
had terminated the earthly career of Jep, the blow was so 
well aimed at his breast, had not his ever trusted Bango 
sprang and fastened his long white fangs on that red arm 
of destruction and averted the blow by a downward 
side-like motion which gashed his own shoulder quite 

The Indian fell with the force of the blow, and Jep, 
with deadlier malice in his soul than before, raised his 
rifle to brain him with the butt end thereof, but he discov- 
ered, ere bringing down the gun, that the Indian was 
gasping his last. 

It was his dying sigh and death-struggle. He lies 
silent now. 

Bango was Jep’s next care. To stanch the blood and 
close the wound was soon accomplished, for it was not 
fatal or very dangerous but quite painful, as the moaning 
of the noble animal attested. 

Jep’s next precaution was to retrace his steps and 
examine the ghastly trophies of his warfare, to ascertain 
if life was extinct in each body of the five victims of 
his hand, but to remove no apparel therefrom, for he held 
it ‘‘mean to rob a dead man.” 

He approached each victim cautiously under the moon’s 
rays, but well might he have been more bold, for each 
was sleeping the sleep of eternal silence to this world that 
knows no waking until Gabriel, on that celestial morn, 
will call all races and kinships up for judgment. 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


33 


When the last stiifening corpse had been viewed, Jep 
broke forth in these strange words : 

“Red dead dogs this is the ending of what was begun in 
other days. Bring on your miscreant hell hounds, you’ll 
find a desperate devil here and a warm reception while my 
powder and lead remains, and, when they are gone, this 
trusty blade of silvered steel will find supreme delight in 
parting your dastard entrails. Many a red dead dog lies 
along my pathway from that gloomy morn, which the veil 
of obscurity hangs so securely over in mercy to fugitives, 
and many more shall occupy a like resting place if you 
will but present yourselves for Jep’s attention, and the 
Eternal of days will lengthen out this loved life of mine. 
I must have done ; day is coming and all there is of my 
dead auditors are busy with the cares of the spirit world 
where my crude accents will hardly interest your doings 
enough to cause a pause at their delivery. Take this, 
however, as a parting salutation to your unshriven souls, 
while there’s one of your race remains, Jep’s hand, and 
that of his kindred marksmen, shall take peculiar delight 
in breaking the red hide which Nature gave you, for the 
escape of that devil loaned by your king, grim Pluto, 
for the vexation of God’s image here.” 

Having ended, he turned once more toward the 
lodge. 

His progress was slower than he was accustomed to 
move, because of the lameness of his trusty dog, Bango ; 
but they made tolerable headway, so that, with frequent 
stops and stays, in the small hours of the second succeed- 
ing morning, they arrived at the clitf of Medevon, with- 
out further interruption or mishap. 

There was a light left burning for Jep ; and no sooner 
had the open door announced his coming, than Anda was 
3 


34 


MEKL OF MEDEVOJS^ 


at his side, with a wild expression on her countenance, 
saying: “ Merl is sick with fever, near unto death.” 

Even so Jep found it, for they were at the side of her 
bed in an instant. 

Her mind wandered in delirium so that she did not 
recognize the trapper. 

They held a hurried consultation. Jep prepared a 
mixture which he administered before caring for his own 
comfort, or that of the dogs. 

She slept, but her breath came very slow, almost imper- 
ceptible at times. Anda sat by the bedside, while Jep 
refreshed himself and the dogs from a well-filled larder. 

Anda and Jep talk in confidential tones apart. They 
return and spend the night at the couch of the sufferer, 
soothing, comforting and administering remedies, such as 
more skillful hands might have given with less favorable 
results. Through the silent hours of the night, they 
watched the fever’s progress, tremblingly, at times, for her 
soul seemed hovering on the brink of the eternal verge, 
preparatory to its taking that erratic flight forever. 

Merl seemed to cease breathing, at times, altogether, 
and then she would revive again. 

The sleep of the dogs was broken and restless, dumb 
animals as they were, still, they seemed to realize that 
sorrow was in the lodge, for the slightest expression of 
grief on the face of Jep was a record which they read 
with the rapidity of an intuitive glance. 

Just before morning, at the hour of the darkest gloom, 
there came a change, at first for the worse, then for the 
better. The patient opened her eyes, and looked with 
that mild expression of contentment which may have been 
suggested by the presentation to her spiritual eye, the 
soul of Rodero robed in the texture of that paradisal 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


85 


clime where the saints of God are in waiting and ever are 
sounding harps and harmonies of holiness. 

Soon her eyes closed and she seemed to rest more 
peaceful. 

At eight o’clock a. m., there was a marked and visible 
change for the better, so that Anda went and laid herself 
down on the lounge for a little rest from her faithful 
watching. 

Jep, like a true minded soul, that he was, lingered at 
his post through the forenoon, until Anda’s return, and 
then went and dressed the wound of Bango, poor animal, 
who was suffering much therefrom. 

Days and nights of patient and weary watching went, 
and wore into weeks, before Merl had sufficient strength 
to leave her bed, and when she did do so, she seemed like 
a spirit from some softer sphere, clothed in robes of immor- 
tality, so changed and seraphic-like her brow. 

But, by degrees, the bloom returned to her cheek, as 
the season wore away. 

She hadn’t, as yet, gone forth alone. The birds had 
missed her much, and, when she did, even they noted a 
difference in her once cheerful mood. Jep had told 
her the whole truth respecting the plot of the murderous 
Talaqua, the death of Rodero, the doom of the Indians, 
and the wound of faithful Bango. 

She grieved and grieved, day after day, longing to go 
and place some flowers on the grave of her dead lover, 
but they, as fugitives, must be discreet, and not go into 
public where prying eyes would find them out. If she 
sought his grave, it must be under the light of the moon 
when no human eye could see her going thither or return- 
ing thence again. There would be no moon for some ten 
days, and so she must content herself as best she could 


36 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


for the present, as the days come and go, with the birds- 
and little beasts, which seemed to regard her differently 
since the cloud of her grief fell so darkly in the 
bright horizon of hope ; but more tenderly, if any- 
thing; for her caress seemed softer and her voice more 
angel-like. 

God’s ways are not man’s ways; and, perchance, it was 
wisely decreed by the Ruler of heaven and earth, that 
sorrow should soften the souls of His brightest angels here 
below, for the greater enjoyments in the beautiful land of 
Eden, beyond the delectable hills, whose glow seems 
golden in the sunlight of God’s grand splendor which 
breaks so beautifully over the borders of the celestial 
lands whose hill-tops are tipped with gold. 

Merl was gentle indeed before her great sorrow, and 
stepped with a harmless tread, but now, she shunned the 
worm in her pathway, and avoided the bringing of a 
startling flutter of excitement to the breast of any bird 
or beast by her sudden and unexpected coming. 

In the meantime, she grew stronger and more resigned 
to her sorrow, spending a good portion of each day out of 
doors reading Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” Moore’s “ Lalla 
Rookh,” Byron’s ‘‘ Corsair,” God’s golden thoughts from 
the Bible, and other beautiful writings of prose, poetry, 
and fiction. 

She had become a great scholar, having a retentive 
memory and being possessed of a meditative mood. 

The silvery crescent of the moon began to enlarge, the 
evenings were balmy and mild. 

She had gained a description from Jep, (who had gone 
forth and made search ) of the grave of her lover and 
its whereabouts. 

She had shaped a beautiful waxen floral form of the 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


B7 


-cross of Christ which she concealed under her cloak, as 
she went forth one evening just before sunset, for a ram- 
ble, as was was her wont, among the hills. 

The sun went down, the shadows of the night folded 
round; she was on the way to the grave of her dead lover, 
and nearly there. She had received a minute description 
of its location from Jep, and she feels no hesitancy in 
believing that she can find it without difficulty or danger 
from night marauders. 

She is there at last and kneeling by its side. 

She sent this soul petition to the absent spirit of her 
dead Rodero: “Oh! my lover in paradise, come hither a 
moment and meet me at your grave; this heart is break- 
ing, and so lonely since you went away. Come and let 
our souls converse, if our bodies are doomed to separation 
now.” 

It was a picture such as painter hath seldom seen. 
Merl kneeling at the grave-side, with hands clasped in 
prayer, face upraised to heaven, amid that silvery moon- 
light sheen, breaking in floating particles around, and 
the gentle zephyrs moving her tresses, so loosely'' 
combed and kept, (since her great grief) falling about 
her there. 

She remained some minutes bowed, and then rose and 
placed the floral cross on the head of the grave with some 
flowers of fair perfume, neatly arranging them. Then she 
stood silently looking at the mound which held all of the 
mortal remains of her idolized one. And she wondered 

why God could see that this is best.” 

As she stood amid her silent reverie, she seemed to feel 
the rustling of angels’ wings fanning her fevered frame, 
and to hear their tinkling footfalls assembling around the 
grave, and out of the moonlight there, this celestial hymn 


38 


MEKL OF MEDEVOI^. 


was sounded to the ear of her soul by the sinless seraphs 
assembled from paradise. 

‘‘ Maiden, mortal, thou of earth. 

Grieve not; for another birth 
Will give him back to thee; 

Where love knows no satiety, 

And never wickedness mars 
The seraph soul divine; 

Beyond the world of stars. 

Where meet the Muses nine.” 

The last soft sounds of the strain followed the silvery 
particles of mellow moon-shine out on the night air; and 
never hath mortal heard the symphonetic sounding of 
such harmonic chords from mouths of earthly mold. 

Merl’s mind was very susceptible, at this peculiar 
moment, to aught of the sublime and beautiful, and her 
soul drank in the harmonic cadences which fell from the 
lips of that celestial band, with all of the heavenly ardor 
which a new-born soul feels when first ushered into the 
joys of the paradisal clime. 

There was a mild mellowness in the atmosphere, a 
subdued sheen, which seemed like silvery showers, float- 
ing from the moon’s full face, and a peculiar peaceful 
lustre radiating from God’s stars, shining sentinels along 
the parapets of heaven, which are nightly lit and replen- 
ished by holy genii’s hands. The milky-way seemed 
more fleecy folden than she had ever seen it before, and 
the northern star glimmered like an intelligence from 
its aerial height in that part of the heavens above the dip- 
per, to guide from danger mariners whose frail barks^ 
often enter those tempestuous seas at nightfall, which 
would be but a liquid grave were it not for the friendly 
rays of that star to guide them safely on their course; and^ 


MEHL OF MEDEYOlSr. 


39 


lower down, just above the horizon, glowed and gleamed 
the auroral lights, which, to mortals, shed a lustre per- 
chance, not unlike the rays of the heavenly halo which 
breaks around the outward walls of paradise, on enrapt- 
ured eyes, as they gain the first glimpses of that glorious 
land whose minarets are tipped with silver, and whose 
streets are golden, and whose sparkling waterfalls wake 
music’s melody as they mingle with the incense-freighted 
breeze, wafting seraph sounds from the celestial harps 
the angels bright are tuning. 

It might have been hours that Merl lingered there. She 
took no note of time. Her soul was rapt in a heavenly 
reverie which she had never realized before; and once she 
thought she heard distinctly whispered from her Rodero’s 
spirit lips, the words, “ Meet me, Merl, in paradise.” 

And oh, the sweetness and the music of that heavenly- 
modulated voice, was balm, indeed, to her troubled soul; 
and faintly, she fancied, was echoed by the angel band, 
her answer, “ Yes, yes, yes.” 

The last yes scarce moved the heavenly zephyr’s breath 
that round her lay, but her spirit’s ear caught the sound 
which thrilled her soul with a rapture of delight. Who 
shall say that angels, at such times, do not communicate 
to mortals some of the delights of that celestial sphere? 
For are they not related? Reader, methinks that heaven 
and earth are much nearer to each other than we are wont 
to imagine, or, at least, that there is a direct pathway 
where shining ones come and go, bringing solace and 
cheer in such hours as Merl spent at the grave of her 
lover. 

It would seem to be a mournful place to ordinary 
minds, yet Merl thought it the very door of heaven, and 
she drank in the deepest delight while lingering there. 


40 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


She seemed almost afraid to stir, least her mortal tread 
should drive away those mortal moods of hers, and the 
immortal ones, which she was conscious were present and 
exerting that holy spell about her. 

Surely, if unseen visitants from the celestial world can 
make this earthly sphere so near like heaven, especially 
the grave-side of the departed, what joys will not break 
upon the enraptured soul to be one of them, and to “ see 
as we are seen?’’ Blessed thought; holy conception; 
divine foreshadowing. Our mortal minds but faintly 
catch a shadow^ of the bliss that is to be, of the beauty of 
the mansion house which He is building, of the exquisite 
delights of a deathless day in that “City whose builder and 
maker is God.” It might be the more heavenly on earth, 
than it is, if we mortals would allow the better impulses 
of the soul to make glad this span between two eternities, 
this station for a time, this “ tent on the beach” of the 
shoreless ocean of eternity. 

It might have been the middle of the night when she 
turned to depart, for Venus had gone down, and the moon 
hung low in the horizon. 

After going but a few steps, she turned and looked long 
and silently at the grave, then up in the sparkling dome 
of God’s universe quite steadily for some seconds; then 
she moved her hands in graceful seeming, as if pro- 
nouncing a silent benediction on the grave of her lover; 
and as if taking a farewell of the celestial hosts which she 
knew were wafting their adieus adown the glory-lighted 
sky. 

E’en the sound of her returning footfalls seemed to jar 
on the sacredness of the scenery about, but it may have 
been imagination, for her soul was full of divine pictures 
and celestial pulsations. 


MEHL OF MEDEVON^. 


41 


She wended back as she had come. 

Finally gaining the lodge, she lifted the latch and passed 
lightly in, and repaired to her bed without question or 
correction from any one. 

Soon she is in slumbers sweet, with the guardian angel 
standing by her bedside. 

Her sleep seems restless, for once she half raised herself 
in bed to a sitting posture and held out her hands in 
seeming attitude as if about to receive the spirit of her 
Rodero back from the celestial walk-way which it had 
been wandering; and then she fell back upon her pillow 
with a faint moan of disappointment and sunk into a pro- 
founder sleep. 

It was late, for her, when she arose — about seven 
o’clock in the morning — yet she seemed refreshed from 
her broken night’s rest. 

She hastily donned a befitting apparel and went into 
the sitting room, where Anda was busy with some fancy 
bead work that the rays of the morning light sparkled on. 

The usual greeting passed, Merl said, “ Oh, how beauti- 
fully those pearls of amber gleam in God’s sunlight.” 

“ Yes, Merl,” answered her mother, ‘‘ the Great Ruler 
of the world was particularly solicitous in fitting up this 
sphere for the abode of man, that the beautiful should 
cheer him.” 

Such conversation could hardly have been expected in 
a trapper’s lodge, in a secluded mountainous region, 
where civilization and art seldom enter. Yet, every word 
exchanged in that lodge savored of sublime sense and 
most devout sentiment, and was as appropriately selected 
as had its inmates been at the head of a college or 
ladies’ seminary of learning. 

Jep was away on the morning hunt, and returned not. 


42 


MERL OF MEDEVOX. 


till Luna, queen of uight, folded her darksome robes over 
mountain, lodge and gorge. But when he came, he was 
delighted to see Merl looking so well ; and she met him 
with the generous smile and open hand of friendship, 
which one only sees between sympathetic souls whose 
affections move in mutual flow. 

They passed a pleasant evening; somewhat like the 
happiness of former evenings. Merl became much 
delighted at times, but it was evident from a close observ- 
ance, that the hilarity of her spirits was caused by 
great effort on her part, for, ever and anon, would come a 
lull, and she would sink back, quite unconsciously, to a 
deep, thoughtful mood, which was only broken by firm 
resolve and great will power. 

Anda and Jep both noticed this. It was quite appar- 
ent to them that she was laboring to conceal the real 
troubles of her soul, and to seem mirthful as of old* 
but it was hard, exceedingly hard, as it always is, to put 
on a gay external when the internal is blighted to the 
core. 

In the death of Rodero, this finely fibered soul, this 
earthly angel, this beautiful flower of the mountains, had 
sustained a grief, deep seated and destined to be of life- 
long duration; for such susceptible, harmonic natures 
can not be thus rudely jarred and give forth the same 
seraphic melody and saintly sunshine as before; for, below 
the surface, are forebodings and fears that this life may 
end all, and be the bound of all, and, in that event, the 
soul may never meet departed, worshiped ones on a higher 
shore, where the love Cupids of God’s golden-shafted 
groves may never be driven away at the approach of shade 
or shadow; where the full fruition of love’s harvest may be 
reaped and kept through the long diurnal of an endless 


MEKL OF MEDEVOiS^. 


43 


day; where the sainted psalms of heaven raise the soul to 
the sublime raptures of ecstacy and bliss; and where the 
gods are circled round by multitudes of shining ones, all 
glorious in their spotless apparel, with crowns polished 
by the architectural workmanship of Jehovah’s finishing 
touch. 

To be shut out of such a place, Merl reasoned, would 
be a doom which she dreaded, oh, so drearily. 

In the course of her extensive readings she had read 
some skeptical works (who has not?) which she did not 
believe, but which served to raise such thoughts in her 
mind. She deemed the fate of the skeptic more marvel- 
ous and unenviable than that of the lowest animal in all 
God’s animal kingdom; for the animal is, apparently, 
content with the life he lives, but to the ear of the skep- 
tic every rustling leaf must be a parable of painfulness, 
as he reads in its death the foreshadowing of his own 
inevitable doom; for his creed would mix the elements 
of his own immortal soul with the filth of cast-off nature 
forever, in that dreamless state of inactivity where Noth- 
ingness holds reign. 

It was only occasionally that such thoughts would dis- 
turb the serenity of her belief in the future state. And 
when her mind regained its wonted equipoise, her faith 
in the sublime creed of Christ was stronger, surer and 
truer than before. 

She loved the Lord’s blessed book, and loved to glean 
lessons of glorious grandeur from nature’s vast and varied 
storehouse. And, though a great sorrow lay on her soul, 
which seemed sinking her mortal tenement beneath it& 
weight, yet she was sustained and supported by the 
blessed words of consolation, derived from a patient and 
continued perusal of the great lessons of life and love^ 


44 


MERL OF 3rEI)EVON. 


as taught in the Holy Scriptures. She could hear the 
voice of God speaking in the tempest, and, to some 
•extent, behold the might of His majesty, when those elec- 
tric bolts of lurid flame shivered the mountain oak or tore 
the ledge of granite asunder. She often caught the 
sweetness of His consoling whispers when holding her 
reveries at the eventide hour, when no breath of air was 
stirring, and no sound in motion, save the wild swans 
and other web-footed fowls, as their snowy breasts broke 
the lake of silver sheen, where Rodero and she had 
plighted their love, with a fervency of promise that the 
historic angel of heaven must have recorded on the great 
ledger of life, for it was so unreservedly made. 

Her’s was a poetic soul and so finely organized that 
such scenes seemed the foreshadowing of the beauties of 
paradise. Surely this dark-skinned maiden was a stray 
soul of the celestial sphere, veiled in some earthly dis- 
guise ; for she passionately loved such scenes as celestial 
wanderers must love : namely, the sublime and beautiful, 
indeed there was a thread of saint-like seeming which 
ran through her nature, more sublime and divine than 
ordinary earthly natures possess. Even the smallest 
insect or tiniest bird, wren or robin, swan of down, or 
fleet-limbed deer, mountain goat, or furry-footed quad- 
ruped, found a tender, thoughtful friend in her ; and 
sometimes the little hidden flower, surrounded by moss 
-and ferns would seem to raise its blooming lips in act to 
kiss her slender feet as she passed along. 

She stood looking into the tranquil waves of the lake 
which lay like a shining sheet of silver before her. There, 
the eye of her angelic soul seemed to catch a glance of the 
oity celestial reflected from its depths with all the beauty 
of delectable hills, golden streets and glowing parapets, 


MEKL OF 3IEDEVON. 


45 


which falls on the enraptured heavenward wanderer’s 
sight as the freed soul enters through “ the gates ajar ” 
that St. Peter guards so faithfully through all the inter- 
esting occurrences which happen without and within. 

She seemed to see the same glorious vision of shining 
ones ascending and descending (which she had seen at 
the grave) along a glorious archway of light; with crowns,, 
harps, and psalters in their hands, singing a subdued carol 
in accord with the melody of the “ Chant Celestial ” which 
the choristers of the city of God sing under that sweet 
musician Israfel all the day long ; all the time through;, 
all the eternity as it ebbs and goes, ebbs and goes, no 
nearer to an ending now than millions of ages past. 

Merl seemed to be transported beyond the walls of par- 
adise standing where her sympathetic soul drank in all 
the bliss of a bright spirit severed from its clay encum- 
bering tenement. Even the wild fowls grew fonder and 
rested on the lakelet’s margin almost motionless, as if 
afraid to break the silent reign of heaven on earth. 

Once in a while, a glow more golden than the rest of 
the amber-lighted scene would break out of the ethereal 
mildness from the crowns of some brighter angels as they 
went speeding by ; those, perchance, whose station is 
nearer the throne of God than others, where the lotus 
trees bend their waving branches in graceful sweep 
around. 

Surely she was not far from heaven? So angel-like she 
had grown, and so holy was her being, and such a mildly, 
benign expression of countenance — it seemed that she 
was a visitant from that fair sphere. 

It is but a step from earth to heaven. To such a being, 
the breaking of life’s thread is but the slightest journey;, 
but the exchanging of these earthly shores for the beauti- 


46 


MEKL OF MEDEA OJN^. 


ful paradise beyond. The missing of such ones here is 
but the realizing, to them, the shining things and the 
loves of that fair land, as soon as flown from this, for 
the crowning day will scarcely give such holy beings 
greater bliss than their souls enjoy when the “ golden 
bowl is broken; ” then their freed souls seek those celes- 
tial pathways which run circling round the out posts 
of heaven, where they, most probably, wait, instead of pur- 
gatory, where the priests would have them doing penance, 
through long years, the purer to purge their souls against 
the judgment day. 

She wended back as she had come, in a deep musing 
mood ; but frequently lingered to greet, with tenderest 
touch and mildest accents, some feathered thing or furry 
kind along the way. 

The inmates of the lodge watched her coming and her 
going very closely with reference to the apparent change 
of habit and health. 

They discerned ‘‘ while she may be growing stronger, 
there is a settled expression of sadness on her face which 
is of the soul, and under which she is pining, daily pining, 
dreadfully pining, peacefully pining for paradise.” These 
beautiful words were Anda’s ; and with much measure- 
ment did she utter them. 

From frequent conversations on the subject, Jep had 
suggested to Anda “ a change from the gilded lodge to 
another clime for the sake of Merl,” and that faithful 
soul, her mother, would, like a true woman, make any 
sacrifice for her daughter’s comfort or Jep’s contentment. 

On several occasions, of late, the thought had been sug- 
gested to Merl, who would reply, “ I want to go where 
he is ; can you take me there ? ” 

Ah ! trusting, confiding words. Poor child, none but 


MERL OF MEDEVO]^. 


47 


a spirit ^uide could point her to his bower in the land 
where the immortals are, over a very different way than 
that to be pursued by Anda and Jep with the view of 
saving her life, for it was very evident to them that a con- 
tinued visitation to the places and the scenes where Merl 
and her lover had walked, and talked, and loved together, 
and the loneliness they suggested to her soul since his 
absence, could but terminate in their loss of her, which 
would be the severest blow of affliction that ever fell upon 
either, and they twain had had their share of severe blows 
in the years gone by. 

So it was arranged that, in the mild sunny days of the 
next opening spring, they would leave the gilded lodge on 
a kind of pilgrimage, going south and somewhat east, to 
where? Ah, they didn’t design that any one should know. 

Time wore on apace. The day for their departure had 
at length arrived. The same settled sadness fell on the 
features of Merl. She had known of their plans for the 
future and yielded to their wishes. But, in the meantime, 
she had gone and taken a final adieu, a last sad farewell 
of her Rodero’s grave, shrouded by the wing of night 
from eyes too sinful to look on so pure a being. 

It was indeed a sad adieu, for she realized that she was 
going out into the wide, wide world to try and forget that 
grave and the silent inmate sleeping there, and all of the 
associations and surroundings that preceded its making. 
But it was only to try. She never could forget that mound 
or its sleeping occupant. That history was a part of her- 
self. A portion of her soul seemed to be lying in that 
grave, sorrowing in a saddened state. Oh, cruel, cruel, 
such things are! Many a heart-rending scene we take 
leave of, along the mournful walks of life which lead to 
where our dear dead are sleeping, when cold comforters 


48 


MEKL OF MFDEVON. 


stand around and the atmosphere is chill with the dews of 
death blown from his dreary mart. And, at such times, it 
seems as if we were leaving all the brightness of life 
behind for a future gloomy as the grave. But the just 
God of many worlds and systems of mighty magnitude 
has nicely planted the spring of joy within the human 
breast and sent His sweet angel of hope to guide us on to 
new friendships and other flowery paths. 

So it was with Merl, to some extent. That solemn 
leave-taking ended, she, once away from the grave and 
its surroundings, the lodge and its associations, the lakes 
and their loneliness, marred with the misery which she 
had borne by their reedy hems, since he met her no more 
there, gone on pilgrimage to an unknown land, unknown 
to her at least, once away from it all, she felt better, much 
better. 

Bango’s wound had long since healed. The bright 
moonlight spring evening of their departure had come. 
They, the fugitives, three in number, Jep, Anda and 
Merl, accompanied by Bango, Dingle and Dip, with the 
arms of warfare that Jep was accustomed to carry, Anda 
with a few trinkets which she prized, and Merl with her 
harp, wended out of that mountainous gorge, away from 
the “ Inaccessible Cliff of Medevon,” away from its gilded 
lodge, as silently and as unseenasthey had come something 
over twenty years before, only that Merl was being carried 
then, and that Jep and Anda had greatly changed now. 

Jep had grown grayer and was less athletic of step, and 
Anda had grown much more matronly in appearance, 
and the dogs were grown very old, for dogs, so much so 
that they presented a quaint, querulous appearance as they 
filed along behind the party ; but they had been faithful 
friends to Jep and he “would take them along.” 


MEKL OF 3IEDEV0N. 


49 


They wended some distance, taking a southerly and 
eastern course, till arriving at a secluded place; here they 
encamped, for the rest of the day; having resolved to 
“ travel nights awhile as it would afford the better security 
till away from the range of Sioux Indians,” whom Jep 
and Anda well knew were their most dreaded and mortal 
enemies among all the races of men. 

Sad, indeed, it was to think of those fugitives, Jep and 
Anda, nearing the sunset of life, leaving their gilded 
lodge, theirs by right of prescription, for a wearisome pil- 
grimage, and most melancholy to realize that Merl was to 
leave forever all those loved haunts which had furnished 
such delicious draughts of soul food in the sunny summer 
of hope. But, then, cheerful it was to Jep and Anda to 
think that the sacrifice was being made with the view of 
saving the life of the brightest flower that ever bloomed 
upon mountain or lea. Sad it was to think of their 
leaving the gilded lodge of Medevon, with all of its accom- 
modations for social enjoyment and intellectual culture, 
its treasure and its trinkets, never to come back, never to 
enjoy it more. Sad it was to think that that lodge, with 
its secrets of shining wealth, should remain for a half cent- 
ury closed to the world, and, when found and opened, that 
a ruthless band of red men should appropriate its shining 
contents and burn its valuable library, holding a war- 
dance around its dying flames, for such was the gilded 
lodge’s doom fifty years after the fugitives had left it 
forever. But then, why not leave it when they left it? 
For they would, by the course of nature, be compelled to 
leave it sometime, and their going now was but a separa- 
tion from its golden treasure only a short time sooner than 
the grim monster, death, would have demanded per- 
emptory possession of its glittering trinkets. 

4 


50 


MEKL OF MP:1)FV0N. 


Yes, we leave our lodges all over the land, shining as 
they are, whether we will or not, and they left theirs with 
some little consolation for they believed it secure in the 
bowels of the mountain where never human foot would 
climb or human hand scatter its contents. 

Onward they wend like pilgrims, as they are, halting,, 
eating, resting, sleeping day after day, week after week,, 
month after month. 

Thus traveling we trace their course down into the wild 
sandy lands of New Mexico. A few miles south of Dona 
Ana we lose their trail and track forever. The wind has 
blown away the last bit of their future history, from that 
time on, the accumulated dust of the ages has covered 
their footsteps and shrouded their taking olf in mystery. 
No record remains of their doom, no lines of tender mold- 
ing is inscribed on any monument to tell their destiny. 
In .the sand regions of Dona Ana, New Mexico, their 
last mortal foot-marks were seen, their last camping place 
discovered of which any tradition or history remains. 
“ They had gone from there,” Delaqua, an Indian brave of 
the Arapahoe tribe affirms, for it seems that he was on their 
track, some hours behind, with the intention of doing them 
harm, and lost it at the place named to find it no more. 

It may be, and most probably is the case, that on find- 
ing themselves pursued by a dreadful foe whose instinct 
and training was acute enough to track them on the 
land, they availed themselves of the angling curves of a 
small brooklet running south, wading its shallows for 
some distance; thereby baffling the designs of their pur- 
suer, Jep not wanting to spill blood on their pathway, 
which would doubtless have raised the bands of half-civil- 
ized Indians about them, and thus have endangered the 
lives of Anda and Merl. 


MEKL OF 3[EI)EVOX. 


61 


That they went on to some selected destination is quite 
evident, judging from all the circumstances surrounding 
the last encampment of which a record remains to tell. 

This mysterious family had gone as they had come, • 
enveloped in strange interest, but joined to each other 
with all the affections and ardor of which the human soul 
is capable. 

Although Jep’s hands were stained \vith blood, the best 
blood of many a victim, yet there is a true manliness in 
his nature, an honorableness of soul which commends 
itself to our approbation, and we like him unaware, for he 
was true as ever man was true to his friends, and as deadly 
an antagonist to his enemies as ever lifted a reeking blade 
or drew an unerring aim at a dastard foe. This man of 
such very contradictory combinations, of such a mildness 
of nature in repose, and such a torrent of scorn and 
deadly activity when aroused, was gone, gone, perhaps to a 
secluded spot with his two friends, whom he loved more 
than he loved life, to pass the balance of his earthly days 
in meditation, penance, for the many crimes which “ the 
law of necessity,” as he would say, compelled him to 
commit. 

It is but fair to remember that that terrible shock 
received at first view of the soul-chilling scene, as he 
returned to his frontier home in ruins in Ohio so long 
before, was the cause of the subsequent life which he led, 
but whether or not that will be considered an extenuat- 
ing circumstance at the bar above, is a problem which 
time alone may tell with unerring certainty. I know not 
whether Jep had gone to wend a peaceful path down to 
the grave, or to pursue the same deadly line of life with 
reference to his foes that the hates of years had settled so 
sorely in his soul. Charity would suggest the former, for 


52 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


there was the safety of dear friends in his hands, without 
any trackless retreat, as of yore, to flee to, and the saving 
of his own soul against the day of deeds. 

Anda’s crime, if crime it was, debased not the purity 
of her truly affectionate soul, but seemed to have made 
her nature more loving and womanly than before its hap- 
pening, for she was to others’ happiness very attentive and 
solicitous; and Merl, like a gentle dove of peace, who 
never had known sin or sinful thoughts, possessing that 
pure ethereal soul-like spirit of her’s, was lost to human 
history from this time on, but not lost, we trust, to the 
company on the coast of the celestial lands when she was 
called to go hence, for never was sod damp enough, or 
grass dank enough, or grave deep enough to hold such 
saintliness forever. 

What was their crime, say you? Reader, years ago, in 
Jep’s younger days, he had a loving wife named Lucy, 
who had been a mother for a year or more. The little 
babe, Barlow, was a bright-eyed, lovely boy, with its 
father’s outward form and its mother’s mild-eyed loveli- 
ness. He was a settler on the frontier of Ohio, tilling a 
small farm, hunting and trapping for profit and pastime; 
and had resided there for some three years, the balance 
of his life having been spent in the Rocky Mountains, as 
we have seen, where he was born and reared. He had 
gone to Ohio as a guide for an exploring party; there met 
Lucy, courted, married, and settled down to live happily; 
but alas, for human hopes. 

The desperate Indian chief, “ Dead Eye,” of the Sioux 
tribe, led a band of six against his home, while away at 
his traps, murdered the mother with the tomahawk, hung 
the babe, Barlow, with a lariat line, to the limb of a tree 
near by; burned Jep’s home to the ground, drove away 


MERL OF MFDEVO]^. 


53 


his horses and other domestic animals which he had gath- 
ered about him there, and retired from the scene of their 
villainy just as Jep was returning. 

From under cover of the woods, near by, he beheld 
them go; but not their work of death and devastation. 

Had he realized the extent of their dastard deed, it is 
more than likely that he had rushed upon the band, in his 
fi antic desperation, and been killed in a frenzied attempt 
to avenge the blood of a murdered wife, which cried from 
the ground, and the strangled remains of a lovely infant 
son, then growing cold in death. 

They went without observing Jep, and he shortly there- 
after came over a little hilltop to discover the object of 
their visit. 

Oh! heartrending scene; most terrible calamity; wife 
murdered, child strangled to death, and home burned; 
naught but desolation around; dreariness and devasta- 
tion now, where lately life and love had awaited his 
coming. 

Jep’s stern, hard manhood bore it all till he beheld the 
lifeless body of his babe swing a ghastly spectre from 
that limb, speaking in unmistakable terms of the devilish 
barbarity of the red fiends, who, unbridled, roamed those 
Western wilds in the days of frontier life. 

In Jep’s haste to rescue his child, he fell to the ground 
in a sinking fit. 

He must have lain there many hours, for the moon was 
in the sky when he came to. 

Then, with stern resolve, he most actively prepared 
himself for the war path, and was on their trail, alone, but 
a host in himself, with the same three dogs (very young 
then), hereinbefore mentioned. 

It was past the middle of the night when Jep fell upon 


54 


MEKL OF .MKDFVON. 


th(iir sleeping camp and dispatched all, in one of the most 
desperate struggles of the many he has had with the red 
men, save their leader, ‘‘ Dead Eye,” who escaped under 
cover of the darkness, and hastily retreated many miles 
away, to a grand encampment of his friends; there to tell 
the triumphs of his hand, and the fate of his fallen com- 
panions; he vowed a vow of revenge, accompanied with 
the superstitious mimickry which attends the expression 
of the dire hate in an Indian’s breast, against the race of 
white men generally. 

Anda heard it and shuddered at the strange rehearsal, 
and resolved to secretly assist the fated white man, if she 
could, by sending her servant “ La Dredo,” true and ever 
trusted, with all possible dispatch, with a small white flag 
of friendship in search of Jep, to warn of the deadly 
intention of his enemies. 

“ Slave of ‘ Dead Eye ’ mourns with you in the loss of 
wife and child, and sends her ‘ La Dredo ’ as a herald to 
tell thee of her people’s coming to slay and to kill. Let 
this be secret, and a warning in time. 

“ Signed, “Anda.’’ 

Away the herald flew with the speed of the wind; and, 
after a day’s delay, in the entanglements of an Ohio 
forest, he found Jep and approached with his friendly flag, 
and delivered his message, only in time for Jep to read its 
contents and thrust it hastily into his pocket, when a hun- 
dred arrows sped with deadly aim, killing “ La Dredo ” 
instantly, and grazing the body of Jep in twenty places. 

With the agility of a tiger, or the speed of a lightning 
flash, he flew over marsh, mound, and bog, dodging behind 
trees and stones for miles, and outstripped all of his pur- 
suers, save one, the one he wished most to meet, “ Dead 


MEKL OF MEDEVON. 


55 


Eye,” who had disabled Jep’s left arm, for the time bein^, 
with a well directed arrow’s flight, sped as they were run- 
ning. 

Jep knew him, and with his trusty rifle’s butt beat out 

Dead Eye’s ” brains, at the base of a rock near what 
was known, some years thereafter, as Losantiville, now 
'Cincinnati. 

He had but a few moments in which to do his work, 
but he did it well, speeding on again to avoid his wrath- 
ful pursuers, he made no halt or stop till well into the 
night. 

Jep was very fleet of foot. No Indian could outrun 
him ; and his dogs were trained so that they followed, the 
one after the other, just behind his flying footsteps, on 
and on, as he ran, halting only when the nightfall had 
sheltered him from his foes. 

He spent a sleepless night in the woods, mourning, 
pondering, thinking. 

The next day he went back to bury his dead ; but the 
Indians, well knowing that he would return for such a 
purpose, were watching so that he could not perform that 
last sad office. 

What would he do? He “ would find that unseen 
friend who had sent the message, and thank her before 
leaving the country.” 

Some d lys and nights passed, perhaps a week in all, 
from the day of his resolve till its fulfillment; but Jep 
was not idle in the meantime. He was reconnoitering 
and had the Indian camp accurately located. 

And now it remained to give his unknown friend some 
kind of signal that she might recognize, for he was deter- 
mined to see her, even at the risk of his life, before leav- 
ing that region. 


56 


MERL OF MEDEVON. 


The opportunity came on a Sunday evening, when all 
the warriors and braves were holding a war-dance, some 
distance from the center of their camp; and from a shel- 
tering cliff of rocks and clump of stunted undergrowth 
which furnished him protection from their view. 

He could not have been more, than five rods from her 
wigwam. As the first low notes, somewhat like the 
mocking-bird, sounded from Jep’s lips, she came forth 
and stood listening attentively for some minutes, till 
Jep had repeated the call several times; then she went a 
kind of round-about way to the clump of trees which 
sheltered Jep. Cautiously and carefully she stepped. 

He met her with the message in his hand. He thanked 
her with all the ardor of a true soul “ for saving his life, 
but deplored the death of her page, ‘ La Dredo,’ from the 
first flight of their dastard arrows.” 

She had “heard it all; the death of her servant and 
that of ‘ Dead Eye.’ ” She “ mourned for ‘ La Dredo,’ 
but didn’t grieve for the dead chief, who was a tyrant to 
her and a devil at heart; who had selected her from the 
Pawnee tribe some years before to be his wife, against 
her will.” 

They talked long, concealed as they were from intru- 
sion. She told him of the terrible tyranny of her dead 
chief, and her hatred of such a life as she was leadings 
She “ would leave that tribe forever were it not that she 
had a little daughter, Merl, only a few months old.” 

Jep loved the kind and cordial manner with which she 
told him all, and insisted that she should “ get the babe 
and we’ll start this very night for the Rocky Mount- 
ains.” 

“ Only a few miles from here, 1 have a friend who will 
furnish horses and wagon, covered and arranged for our 


MEKL OF MEDEVOI^. 


57 


convenience, with food for a part or all of the way, for 
John Edwards himself has been an emigrant, and but 
lately come into this terrible neighborhood. I have some 
money with w^hich to purchase the outfit. Go, get the 
babe, return, and we’ll be friends for life.” 

It was enough. In one-half hour they were retreating 
from that Indian camp. Jep was carrying the sleeping 
babe, and Anda was walking at his side, and the dogs 
behind. 

After some seven miles of travel, they awoke John 
Edwards from a peaceful sleep and negotiated the pur- 
chase of the team, and arranged about food and clothing 
for comfortable camping out at night, cooking utensils, 
thus preparing for a long drive generally. 

Before the clock struck twelve m., they were rolling 
over the rough track leading West, which the first set- 
tlers of that region had made. 

John Edwards promised to “ tell nothing,” and he very 
likely kept his word, for those early frontiersmen were 
like brothers, true and tried to each other. 

They only halted to water the horses, a span of noble 
bays, three or four times, till the shades of the next suc- 
ceeding night began to gather around. Then they 
sought and found a camping place in a pleasant nook 
beside a sparkling creek, whose rippling rills flowed away 
like shining silver through the fragrant meadows beyond. 

Supper was prepared and partaken of, by Jep, with 
much relish, for he had eaten but little for many days, 
Anda was too much troubled with thoughts of her 
escape from a terrible life, with her idolized child, to 
relish food much until the cravings of hunger set in, but 
the appetite of the dogs was very keen. 

Thus they traveled day after day, week after week,. 


m 


MEIIL OF ^FEDEVOK. 


till two months and a half were gone, and at last reached 
the mountains without any serious mishap on the way; 
although they were often in much danger from roving 
bands of Indians between the Missouri river and their 
destination. 

They stopped in that part of the same, near what is 
now known as ‘‘ Golden Gate.” Here Jep erected a 
temporary, but quite convenient log cabin, and prepared 
it with comforts for the winter; selling his team and out- 
fit to a trader on the plains below, after laying in a 
winter’s supply of provisions for the three. 

Jep loved hunting and trapping, and had purchased 
some traps so that he might pursue his favorite occupa- 
tion, and was very successful in catching the mountain 
beaver and mountain marten, and disposed of large 
quantities of the furs of the same to traders the following 
winter after their first arrival, 

Anda was the same patient, faithful, loving creature, 
which we have seen her to have been through that first 
winter in the mountains. Jep was in the habit of going 
off on exploring expeditions for several days together, 
which caused her some uneasiness. But the little babe, 
Merl, occupied her time, and so the months went, one after 
another. 

In one of his rambles he had accidently overheard some 
trappers talking of a ‘‘gilded lodge ” in an “ Inaccessible 
Cliff” called “ Medevon,” near Central Park (they being 
unable to find it), that superstition had “ fitted up with 
all the wonderful things of which the imagination can 
picture,” and which was said to be “ uninhabited.” Jep 
resolved, in his quiet way, to make a visit of recon- 
noissance to that country and explore this wonderful 
lodge. 


MEKL OF MEDEVOX. 


59 


So, accordingly, he returned to his cabin and told 
Anda that he would ‘‘ be gone for some two weeks, but 
would surely and safely return.” 

She never questioned his right to go or his truthful- 
ness as to returning. 

Therefore, on the next morning, Jep started to find the 
gilded lodge ” and spent some days in reaching the 
region of its whereabouts. 

As the snows were deep in that season of the year, it 
^became necessary to use snow-shoes some of the time. 
He spent two more days, in what, to him, seemed a fruit- 
less search. He became quite fearful of finding the 
lodge, when fortune favored him at last^ for he actually 
stumbled and fell from a cliff, some twenty feet, alight- 
ing at the very door of the “gilded lodge,” opening it 
with the force of the fall. 

Somewhat stunned and badly shaken, he soon recovered, 
however, to find the dogs fawning over him (lor he never 
went out without his dogs) and making quite an ado to 
bring him back to consciousness. 

He arose, and with the nerve of a man prepared for any- 
thing, knocked several times on the half-open door, in 
hopes to bring out some of its inmates (if any there were) 
to the light of day; but no response. 

He opened wider the door and entered. 

He found spacious apartments finely furnished with 
many curious trinkets of art and specimens from nature’s 
laboratory, which, at once, excited his admiration and puz- 
zled his judgment much, as to whether or not it was real 
reality that his eyes beheld, or was he in fairy land? 
transported thither by some mysterious underground pas- 
sage from the shores of the earthly sphere which he had 
so lately inhabited? 


60 


MEKL OF MEDEVOIS^. 


Thus he questioned and queried for some minutes, 
going to the door in the meantime and taking a survey 
of the ledge from which he had fallen and the winding 
walk- way which led from the door, over which no mortal 
foot had passed for many years. 

The path was an underground one, but sufficiently 
lighted at either end to admit of a minute examination by 
the assistance of the rays of day which came streaming in. 

Jep followed it on to the end of the archway, and looked 
the snow over carefully. No trace of a human foot was 
anywhere visible. The over-arching pathway or entrance 
was admirably adapted to mislead and deceive the 
explorer as to the lodge’s location ; but “ this is so much the 
better,” thought Jep, “ for it will be the securer.’^ Tt was 
strange, indeed. 

However, Jep had come to explore the lodge and its 
mystery, so far as he could do so, and he would remain 
for the night within its walls, and, perhaps, for some days 
in the neighborhood of its location, to ascertain whether 
or not to secure it as a home; for his greatest fear, in 
disputing for possession, was that some mortal, or mortals, 
inhabited it, and in that event it would be exceedingly 
embarrassing, and not a little dangerous, to dispute pos- 
session with the proprietors of the same. He felt no con- 
cern whatever in the thought that sightless spectres held 
dominion there, for he had never been molested by those 
ethereal wanderers, whom so many believe visit, and even 
remain for a time, on this earth of ours. 

After thus musing for some time, about the probable 
and the improbable phenomenon of nature, and the 
mystic superstitions which have such a hold on the pecu- 
liarly fashioned mind, he retraced his steps and entered, 
what, to him, seemed a place of enchantment, once again. 


MEKL OF MEDEVO^\ 


61 


He was very tired and so were the dogs. He prepared to 
remain for the night, which was fast approaching. 

Jep stationed himself by the door, just within, and 
bade the dogs “ lie down to rest,’’ and there, on watch 
with his trusty rifle, he passed the long, and, to him, a some- 
what lonely night, musing in reverie mood over the pros- 
pect of a secure and safe retreat for Anda and Merl, when 
he was off on the trail of some living foe or track of some 
animal of the chase. 

As yet, he had found no opposing occupant of flesh or 
blood in possession of the gilded lodge, and he didn’t 
greatly fear that there would be presented to his notice 
such an occupant; and, as to the spirits of phantasy which 
found such, or formed such, beautiful walls and gathered 
such rare materials, they surely could not find it in their 
delicate and sensitive natures to do him or his harm. 
Thus he reasoned and mused, until returning morn, when 
he and the dogs went forth into the valley below, care- 
fully viewing the secluded entrance way which led to the 
lodge, so that he might find it again. 

Winding along for some miles down the valley, 
Jep came to a sort of rude settlement, where was a store 
and several small huts or cabins of tradeis and trappers. 

He learned that the store was called “Lunday’s Leg- 
horn House,” and that he could find here, ‘‘ ample food and 
good lodging, if he required the same,” from a sort of good- 
natured looking individual loitering around the store door. 

Jep spent but little time in obtaining an ample breakfast 
for himself and the dogs. And, having paid for the same, 
he retired unquestioned, with dogs and gun, for, in those 
days, few questions were asked and fewer answered, which 
were of anything like a personal nature among this class 
of individuals. 


C2 


MEIiL OF MFOEVON. 


Jep’s task was to explore the surrounding country, and 
to ^‘know for himself” if the gilded lodge was inhabited 
or vacant. 

To fully accomplish this object, and satisfy himself,, 
consumed some few days, of searching, exarnbdng, explor- 
ing, and surveying that region carefully over. 

This done, he returned to Anda and Merl, in due pro-^ 
cess of time, with the flattering news that he “ had found 
a home, secure from friends and foes, to which they would 
go, and possess it when the season opened.” He told 
Anda of its appearance, and his discoveries thereabouts. 

He returned again that winter no less than five times 
to the lodge, with the view of ascertaining if aught en- 
tered or departed therefrom of human shape, dryad, or 
dwarf ; but found never trace of footprint or track, belong- 
ing to the material world, neither that of silken -sandaled 
seraph within or about its mysterious precincts. 

He fully had determined to take Anda and Merl there,, 
and enjoy its comforts, for he believed the lodge to have 
once been the possessions of some mighty ruler in other 
ages, whose lease of life had been forfeited, and whose 
soul had, perchance, gone to a brighter bourn on the 
shores of some celestial paradise; to roam and rest amid 
its ever varying scenery, without coming back to the 
borders of this world to dispute possession with mortals.. 

The reader has heretofore seen their passage up the 
valley, on their journey to possess the lodge, located in 
the “ Inaccessible Clifi* of Medevon,” and has traced the 
occurrences and happenings of its inmates, in the onward 
flow of time, through more than twenty years. The reader 
has seen them come and go. But where are they now? 
And who was the proud possessor of the gilded lodge 
originally? 


MEIU. OF MEDEVON. 


63 


Ah ! well may we ask, but speculation and probability 
alone must answer, if answer there be had. 

That the actors in this sketch have long since passed 
from earth’s sphere to another shore, by the course of 
nature, is true, as well as the original occupant, or occu- 
pants of the gilded lodge. But who or what he, she,, 
they were is a very different question, and one not of easy 
solution. There was the lodge, located in a secure and 
formidable retreat, containing a vast amount of wonders 
and curiosities (even before Jep added the many com- 
forts and conveniences of life, as well as a valuable 
library, thereto), which must have been gathered by 
extensive travel or liberal purchase, from various parts 
of the civilized and uncivilized world. 

Had the lodge been discovered by white men, before 
its demolition by inhuman Indian hands, there might 
have been much light thrown upon its former occupant, 
or occupants, by some trace or sign or trinket or chart, 
which was scattered and consumed in the flames that 
lighted the warlike revel of those lawless red men who 
found it. 

The traveler, at this day, can discern nothing but a 
torn and seamed cavern, dark and desolate, where once 
the “Gilded Lodge of Medevon ” held its treasure and 
its cheer, for those of other ages. 

Might not the owner thereof have been master of a 
race, different from our own, whose last vestiges have been 
swept away by tide and time? Or, had the red men of 
the forest a ruler, or chief, whose stronghold it was 
before we drifted to their shores? It is a mystery, like 
many another mystery, which shall forever remain buried 
in the inconceivable mysteries of God’s providence, until 
the development and consummation of His mighty plan 


64 


MERL OF MEDEVOTs^. 


and purpose is shown more fully in the creation of the 
races. 

That there is an interest awakened in the breast of the 
antiquarian, in making search for a record that will tell 
the tale of other days, cannot be questioned, which 
approaches enchantment at times. 

The sand fields of New Mexico held the last foot prints 
made visible to our eyes, of Jep, Anda and Merl; and 
the Indians, in their mad dances, beheld the tongues of 
the last leaping flames which consumed the greater part 
of the contents of the lodge of Medevon. The rest of 
the record is lost. 

My task is done. But, reader, before we part company, 
let us not too harshly judge Jep, whose hands were only 
raised in revenge, after that dastard deed of the Indians, 
which murdered a wife and child and laid a home in 
ruins. Let the God that shall judge us all pass sentence, 
or favor, on Anda, as she shall deserve, remembering 
that she was dutiful and kind in all domestic matters. 
And let us hope to meet the wronged Merl in the realms 
of light, beside the meandering streams of mercy, above, 
accompanied by her Rodero; for no purer soul hath 
wandered earthward from the gates of heaven, in the 
history of a race, than hers. 


LULULEE 


In a beautiful vale of New England, many years ago, 
I chased the golden-winged butterfly, and had my day 
dreams building air castles, and seeing the ladened ships 
with their white sails go floating by, thinking that some- 
time, in the far away future, a ship would shoreward sail 
for me, richly freighted with the gems of earth. And 
often, with book in hand, for a half holiday, would I 
wander down to the water’s edge, reading some fairy tale, 
or penning, now and then, a line of beguiling thought to 
the moon, stars, or world around me. 

After a few short years I wended away from those 
youthful haunts, out into the wide, wide world; and there 
found another sunny glade, another lovely spot, to roam 
and recreate in. 

Sometimes, in my rambles, I would meet Lululee, a 
neighbor’s daughter, with liquid brown eyes and sunny 
hair, and a complexion akin to those terrestrial fairies 
which, oft, on summer nights, go tripping o’er the lawn, 
scattering halos of glory round. 

Many, many days we wended together reading nature, 
growing more mature and seeing scenes which led our 
youthful minds to contemplate, in profoundest admiration, 
the stupendous works of God. 

5 ( 65 ) 


66 


LT LULEE. 


As the years sped on apace, we sought each other’s 
society more and more, and restless seemed, then, when 
one was away from our favorite haunts. She, a maiden 
growm, and I, not much her senior, became aware of the 
presence of love in our hearts. 

For sometime, we had roamed those hills and that valley 
fair without a thought of Cupid or his bow, till one bright 
evening when the setting sun gilded the golden foliage of 
an Autumnal twilight, we sat on a fallen tree with hands 
locked in love’s embrace, looking into the silent waters 
which lay at our feet like a sea of gold, stretching away 
in the distance below the red and tinted horizon. 

We spoke but few words, for we were sensibly aware of 
the presence of the love god Eros, and felt that he had 
enkindled in our souls a fire which the mists of time 
could never quench. A change came over all things. 
The mountains in the distance seemed tipped and tinged 
with gold. The fair and fragrant tints of the green car- 
pet of earth stretching away through the valley caused 
Lululee to speak of its changing colors. Brilliant and 
bright flowers sprang up where we had hitherto seen none. 
The music of the little rill rippling just behind us, and 
trickling adown the mountain side from the cool and crys- 
tal spring at its source, sounded sweeter, as if a lost angel 
lino'ered there to cheer it on to the ^reat ocean of life. 

O 

The delicate white hue of the daisies made a strange con- 
trast with the ruby red lips of the asphodel ; and Hope arose 
in our paths, inviting, like an angel divine, to a higher 
and holier life amid the bounty of God so lavishly spread 
on every hand. The rays of the receding sun came with 
a warmer glow, lighting up all the beautiful horizon; and 
the sleepy zephyrs seemed lulled to a repose amid the 
silence of no sound; gay colored birds went winging with 


LULULEE. 


67 


joyous notes over our heads, warbling their songs of love; 
while sounding on the night-tide came music more divine 
than the harp of ^olus e’er told. 

She seemed to me a seraphim from the sacred sphere, 
as I looked into her angel eyes, impressing a kiss of pas- 
sionate love on her willing lips. 

For days we met at our wonted resort with the purest 
motive of love. She was artless and innocent as the brief 
life we had led among the flowers. No guile dissembled 
the fervor of love within our souls, while we examined the 
minutest recesses of our hearts as we walked and talked 
together of the mighty change which of late had been 
wrought therein. 

In that sweet sanctuary of spotless love, with the rustle 
of angel pinions on the incense-freighted air, we threaded 
the varying vistas of reverie thought, in a sort of dreamy 
wanderings along the shores of paradise. She seemed to 
me more angelical than mortal; and more than once I 
fancied that a subdued and celestial hue of mild and mel- 
low light broke around her features much too heavenly to 
remain in this world, where is visible the melancholy 
traces of decay. 

Who dare assert celestial surroundings shall not exist 
in the hereafter, when the soul is so susceptible to the 
softest touch of nature’s harp amid this earthly span, 
beautifully divine? Earth once was an Eden fair, and 
although the serpent came blighting hopes and hearts ; 
making the mistletoe wither and fade by the breath of 
the tomb; yet there are traces of celestial footsteps on 
earth, and God-like fashionings as it sped forth from 
the Almighty’s hand, out into boundless space. Many a 
finely-fibered soul has seen beaut}^ and bliss enough on 
every hand, wasting for want of wwshipers, to make 


68 


LULULEE. 


this sphere of existence more heavenly than most 
mortals think it might become. 

And why should earth’s favored spots not be heavenly 
to eyes that search out the beauties of God’s creation? 
tinted with leaf and vine, foliage green and golden, car- 
peted with verdure and with bloom ; which the silken 
sandals of angels press as they seek out drooping ones,, 
bearing to them hope’s crystal sculptured urns filled with 
food for the soul? 

As those days of youthful hope fled too rapidly by, 
away into the eternal silence of the past, never again to 
dawn upon my life, I seemed to feel that Lululee’s 
human frame was tenanted by a spirit, or some strayed 
soul from the golden barrier which separates the purest 
angels and most seraphic seraphims from that somewhat 
lower order of celestials which wait and worship near the 
gate of gold, longing to enter in where mirth, music and 
bliss makes short the tedium of an eternal day. 

Yes, I looked on her as a divine essence placed for a 
season amid dying mortals to fulfill some heavenly mandate. 
And, as 1 lingered at her side through happy days and 
silvery eventides, would sometimes enter my musings, 
thoughts of change. Thoughts that the grim, unseen mes- 
senger of death might wander that way, and, in mere wan- 
tonness, reap my loved one down, amid all that heaven and 
bloom without word of warning. And ah, what lonely and 
languid longings to build a bower of protection round my 
earthly angel for her defense would stir the troubled emo- 
tions of my soul. Would I flee with her beyond the 
paths where death treads so wasteful and so wantonly on 
marring the form divine with his dull but deadening 
weapon of terrible warfare? And then I would banish 
such thoughts saying, “ She is too heavenly for the foul 


LULULEE. 


69 


hands of this sightless shade to molest or mar.” And 
would come over my soul as her softest accents fell into 
my heart's deepest center more beautiful thoughts of a 
wedding day, breaking clear and brilliant above the low- 
ering horizon’s shaded and interspersed gloom, lying away 
in the dismal distance, many roods and ranges ol far-off 
sweep. 

Amid those thoughts and longings, a change came over 
us ; for a few years took us from that valley fair to the 
frescoed walls of college and chapel in the dingy city’s 
shade, distant some miles away. 

But we went together thither, and together as class- 
mates and lovers lingered through those years of college 
life. 

With what joyous pride and hope did I behold from 
day to day the unfolding and budding of womanly graces, 
beautiful as the lily that blooms on the silvery bosom 
of some crystal lake, soon to die in the death-freighted 
air which wafts its dampened odors from the dying myrtle 
at the door of the tomb. 

Our commencement past and its honors conferred, from 
that hour there came a change, a cruel change, which 
chilled the current of my soul; for plain as the invisible 
finger of fate writes his heartless ritual on the delicate 
brow of love, did that relentless monster touch my Lulu- 
lee in merciless merriment. 

She drooped and faded like one breathing poisoned 
airs from filthy tarns of tangled verdure, decaying in the 
dead slime of motionless putrification. The bloom faded 
from her face. The holy light of heaven from her brow, 
and the deep liquid intelligence left her eye, and scarce 
three days had elapsed ere my lovely Lululee lay in her 
death shroud, amid weeping friends and relatives, at what 


70 


LULULEE. 


was once her home; fondly pressed to my agitated heart 
almost as cold as her’s, and worse tormented than 
sinners, amid flame that never licks away the life of the 
condemned of God, 

I followed her to the tomb amid the forms of the last 
solemn service. I heard the cold clods strike on the 
coffin lid, which sent their dull dead sounds through what 
I thought my dying heart; for scarce did the receding 
pulsations perform their office. 

Long I lingered there, with one or two waiting friends 
gazing on that spot of earth which contained my all, until 
awakened from my strange stupor and sadness by kindly 
borders of cheer. 

And, as I turned to go, there fell on my last glance 
at the grave, the form of an angel with the heavenly 
herald of hope bound about her bosom in golden letters; 
and, with a small white scroll, she pointed up the shining 
steps to the celestial sphere, down which she had come 
to the grave of my dead darling, which was visible 
to my mortal eyes but a moment. Whereat, a rustling 
as of silken sounding tissues fell on my ear ; while 
low, melodious and loving, there broke a celestial melody 
from the borders of paradise. 

The earth seemed changed. The valleys, the hills and 
the rivers were not the same to me, for a deep sorrow lay 
on my soul, which might elude the careless eye in the 
effort at good cheer. 

I wended oft in the ^twilight eventide along our favorite 
walks, and through our accustomed haunts to soothe my 
sorrow; but her shadow gone, the grove grew gloomy. 
The crystal spring put on a deadened and darksome hue, 
and when the birds of beautiful plumage piped their 
roundelays, the notes seemed dying in the distant and 


LULULEE. 


71 


oppressive air. The bloom of the flower had faded away 
like the blighted hope of a fruitless life; and there was 
a nameless longing at my heart to burst with one bound 
from nature into nothingness, from the verge of time 
into the limitless confines of the eternal world, that face 
to see again, that form to fold to my tired and troubled 
bosom. 

But the beyond, ah, the beyond; do bosoms move in 
the vast measureless, motionless beyond to the throbbings 
of love? 

’Tis a question any one may ask, but what philosopher 
of earth shall pen an unerring answer thereto? 

I lingered long enough in that cold grown valley to find 
no returning joy as the months sped their prime. On the 
darkest and most gloomy day of all the year, I bade 
“good by ” to the few friends who remained and took my 
journey toward the setting sun; for what? to draw the 
thick and somber veil of mystic oblivion over all the past. 
What delusion, how fatally I had misjudged, for, ever in 
the silence of the night, or amid the busy throng of 
pleasure seekers, that face was before me in my dreams 
and in the draughtless pleasures which I sought to drain 
from the fashionable world. 

Over all, there hung a cloud of gloom which no breeze 
of pleasure would waft hence. But, by dint of industry 
and a life of honor, the star of fortune rose and shown 
over my way. I vainly fancied that the clink of the 
golden guinea would heal all heart wounds; but there is 
a dead and hollow sound in the sovereign which but pains 
the heart pining for its idol flown. 

Thus tiring of the yain delusions of life, I betook myself 
to writing and rhyming; worshiping my fairy angel in an 
atmosphere of fondest hope. 


72 


LULFLEE. 


Along all the winding paths which I have traced since 
then, amid all the varying scenes of an active life, has my 
Lululee’s ideal presence, ever near, cheered me over life’s 
rugged and tiresome way to the fair and fragrant hills of 
hope, which stretch, towering heavenward, bright as 
the golden radiance of a celestial morn, whose spotless 
clouds of purity rise one above the other, in the archway 
of destiny, bending so beautifully over us amid the silent 
blue of the dome of God, set with stars of intelligence and 
points of light fitly reflected to impress upon mortals 
something of the immortality of the Eternal One and His 
Kingdom hid from human eyes. 

Yes, in a sort of soul-sustaining reverie, in a reposeful 
confidence, in deep and satisfied peace of mind, has that 
departed form been my guide and angel of hope. 

And, although I miss her mortal presence, yet I feel, I 
know she hovers round and about me on seraphic wing 
that never tires during my wakeful moments, and, when 
reposing, soothed by Sleep — the twin brother of Death, 
her bright and heavenly pinions waft a restful requiem of 
soft sweet music round my soul. So that in my waking 
moods I am sensibly aware of the intercommunication of 
soul and soul, sipping the balms from love’s celestial 
asphodels which bloom in the fields of paradise. 

O, disappoint me not, fair Lululee ; disappoint me not 
thy love and angel presence, beyond the beyond, where 
the fetterless flight of time flits tireless on, and love 
unbounded holds sway, through an endless sweep, amid 
those spheres whose heavenly hills rise in grandeur far 
past man’s painting, and golden shafted trees bear decay- 
less fruit, free as the crystal waters that flow by the 
throne of God. 

There, my Lululee, we shall meet never again to part ! 


MONK MOD A. 


In the sixteenth century, a pious and God-fearing monk, 
Hanzel Moda by name (known for many miles around as 
Monk Moda), built him a monastery in the mountains of 
Akaba, in that range where the sacred Sinai rears its head 
heavenward, and about whose brow still lingers some 
traces of that holy and tranquil light which illumined the 
robes of Christ in the era I. 

Moda’s companion, at first, was a faithful dog of the St. 
Bernard species, with long black silken hair and an intel- 
ligent eye which seemed to observe the slightest motion 
on the part of his master, as if the saint-like atmosphere 
in which Moda moved had its influence upon the gentle 
canine. Being well aware of the noble nature of his dog, 
trusty under any and all circumstances, the Monk had 
given him the name of Trusto. 

There was also a member of the feline species, a large 
and honorable looking cat, which shared the monastery of 
his master, named Yico. 

The monastery was built of stone, stone within and 
stone without, cemented in masonry, a rude and rural 
structure of some height, sort of sphereal shaped with 
now and then a scant crevice or aperture through which 
the daylight might shine but feebly ; however, the light 

( 73 ) 


74 


MONK MODA. 


of the sun was not much needed, as the saintly Moda,. 
night and day, kept burning a flame of incense on a sort 
of shining altar which had been prepared in the most holy 
part of the mosque. 

There were four apartments or rooms of about equal 
dimensions, some nine or ten feet square, used respectively 
for sleeping rooms, kitchen, and the “holy of holies,”" 
where no profane form had ever entered; even Trustoand 
Yico were so well tiained in the monkish faith that they 
were never known to cross the threshold of that sacred 
room. But, while their pious master was at his devotions,, 
would stand with bowed heads without, at the doorway 
looking therein. 

For six years had Moda occupied this aforesaid monas- 
tery, alone with his dumb companions, growing more saint- 
like every day. The long hours spent in devotional exer- 
cises, reading and praying to the Eternal Spirit through 
the opening day and at the curfew bell, ’tis said are re- 
corded and kept by the historian of the skies, whom 
Lord Byron mentions as being in “ arrear of human ills;”^ 
and when the holy man of God walked forth, nature’^ 
bounds to scan, his dumb companions followed meekly in 
the rear, while, with robe of somber shadow, the good 
Moda walked with head uncovered and reverently bowed 
in the presence of the Deity. 

He avoided human eyes and was supplied with food 
from Akaba, not far off, by trusty hands that always 
obeyed his supreme injunction, viz., that never mortal 
foot unasked should cross a sort of charm circle which he 
had established by metes and bounds a hundred rods 
away from the monastery; but provisions could conveni- 
ently be left in a certain storehouse which Moda had 
erected for such a purpose, where, by means of slates with 


MONK MODA. 


75 


pencils attached thereto, orders were given and filled ; 
Moda always remitting by mail golden coin to his cred- 
itors for articles thus furnished, by handing the same to a 
cab driver who passed within a hundred and fifty rods of 
the monastery some three or four times a week, and who 
was intrusted with the delivery of the mails and all 
packages of value. 

I said no being ever crossed his bounds, but I must 
have said it thoughtlessly, for, one day as the good monk 
was taking his accustomed walk in a grove of beautiful 
palm trees, about fifty rods distant, Moda heard a maiden 
singing in the Arabian tongue, a sweetly plaintive strain, 
which touched the soul of the good man, who, in a heed- 
less manner, addressed his footsteps to that part of the 
grove, thinking the voice might be that of an angel; 
or, betide the worst that might, he could shrive his 
soul, if his glance met mortal eyes of the fair sex, 
unhallowed by Bible teachings and faith in God. 

Overcome and bewildered with the maze of golden 
curls, which hung so profusely about her shoulders, he 
could not remove his glance of most enraptured holiness, 
but stood gazing long and silently at the beautiful 
young damsel before him. 

When, approaching with appropriate questions and 
gentle replies, he learned that she was an Arabian 
maiden. Dele via Angelica by name, and had wended 
thitherward in quest of varied scenes amid which to pass 
the tedium of a summer day. Her artless demeanor 
and frank reply caused the man of monkish motives 
to become much interested in this fairy creature, 
who had been thus providentially thrown in his way; for, 
of truth, it may be said that even this holy man of God, 
into whose mind guile never entered, was lonely for 


76 


MONK MOOA. 


some fair daughter of Eve to waken his liner fancy with 
her magic touch. 

So, without further hesitation, he seated himself upon 
the trunk of a fallen tree, which Delevia then occupied, 
and thus addressed himself to her: 

“ Thou delightful daughter of man, so fair, 

Too fair for the world and its care, 

Would that thou my monastery might share ; 

for, within its sacred walls, no mortal discords ever dis- 
turb the intercommunication of soul with soul, wending 
the vistas of God, in that ethereal realm of mind and 
fancy, whose pathway is peace, and whose passport 
through its celestial avenues is the book of books.” 

He paused. She looked surprised and delighted at 
the fine old man, whose silvery hair and beard of snow 
seemed bathed with celestial light, diffused through the 
balmy eventide of that Arabian land; and, being of a 
nature quite susceptible to the superstitious faith of the 
times, and thinking that an entrance to his hermitage 
must be the gateway leading to heaven, replied with 
kindly speech: 

“I shall deem myself but too favored a mortal to 
renounce the world and enter upon a life of holiness with 
thee, thou man of God, and the invisible spirit whom 
thou worshipeth, as becomes a follower of truth divine.” 

He questioned further. 

She promised, and made the promise binding with an 
oath framed in the ritual of heaven, that she would repair 
to his abode, and never go hence to reveal any of the 
secrets of the sacred sanctum, builded by holy hands on 
Moda’s manor. 

Accordingly, he guided her glad footsteps thither, for 


MONK MODA. 


77 


she much wished to rid herself of the deceptive world and 
its range of \Yeariness. 

She entered the massive portals of the faith-defended 
shrine, and at once was conscious of being within that 
circle nearest heaven, where so many wait to wash away 
the last mortal stain ere the full eflFulgence of divinest 
light breaks round their saved souls. 

Every kindness that could be shown, consistent with 
sacred piety, was tendered her. One of the rooms was 
fitted up for her sleeping apartment, into which, from that 
day forward, Moda never entered, no more than she, or the 
trusty hound, or the faithful cat crossed the threshold of 
the “ holy of holies ” 

As time sped on apace, the good monk failed not to 
impress her youthful mind with the solemnity of the step 
into eternity, and the teachings of the Scriptures in the 
original text, as handed down to Moses on the Mount 
of God amid the brilliancy of a celestial illumination. 

Fairer and more angelical she grew, as the divine 
effluvia of the sacred incense, which was kept continually 
burning, instilled itself into her soul. 

Some five years had sped their weary flight since 
Delevia had entered Moda’s monastery, when one day, at 
the grove, singing some saintly hymn, her voice attracted 
the person of a young and bold brigand, who was rid- 
ing on weary steed across the small plateau near by. 

When, turning in the direction of the singing, he urged 
his jaded horse hotly onward to the shelter of the grove^ 
where, alighting, he gave rein to the animal, who leisurely 
nipped the grass beneath the shade trees, while his master, 
Vergeldero Mardigo, entered the grove in quest of the fair 
form who gave forth such a voice of sweetness. He had 
approached but a few steps, when lo, he beheld Delevia 


78 


MOXK MOD A. 


in all the attraction of womanly graces, sitting on her 
accustomed tree, singing to the birds of beauty perched 
upon the boughs above her head. A wealth of golden 
curls fell about her beautifully rounded shoulders, which 
made her at all times most attractive. Her angel eyes, 
tinted with the liquid blue of heaven, and her mild and 
pleasant brow, with features delicately moulded in nature’s 
most perfect measure, caused Vergeldero to stay his 
approaching steps, and raise his plumed turban in atti- 
tude of chivalrous respect. 

The bold brigand, before whom foe never lingered 
long, fancied himself on the confines of paradise, gazing 
at a strayed seraph from its holy habitation. He remained 
in this attitude, seeming to be incapable of a;pproach or 
retreat, until Delevia, wearied with the suspense and 
unbroken monotony around, said : 

“Cavalier, comest thou with prudent intention or base, 
ignoble motive? that thou approacheth the privacy of a 
lady’s bower thus rudely and unbidden?” 

Whereat, Vergeldero, in the same Arabian dialect, made 
fitting reply with the grace of a beau ideal ( for he had 
been the guest of many a royal court, and played the car- 
pet knight oft times when his weary steed rested for a 
time from toiling over the rough sides of the Arabian 
mountains) saying, “my mission, maid of the sun, 
is naught but honors earned in quest of worthy mortals, 
and perceiving thine to be the most musical voice that 
ever lost a chord to trees and trellised vines for auditors, 
I have come to pay homage at thy shrine, O ! fairest of 
the fair.” 

His stay was short. Her speech was blended with 
blandishments of the female art. 

“ He might ride that way again when the birds would 


MOIS^K MODA. 


79 


near his coining ere two suns had set: gilding leafy col- 
onade with receding beams of gold; and would she 
care? ” 

“ Not when her guardian augels were near 
To lull to rest the passion in her breast, 

Which man’s artful wiles doth sometimes test; 

Then, Sir Cavalier, thou mayest come here.” 

He rode away. 

She hastened to the monastery to offer up her devotional 
and shrive her soul of the mortal moods which his coming 
had moved therein. 

But, as the days came and went, her singing hymns in 
the grove of palm trees became more frequent. While, 
with freshened steed our cavalier skimmed the skirts of 
the grove ere the dew was off the lawn, fancying that 
heaven lay therein. The hours went like winged doves 
with a golden thread running through all their tireless 
time. 

They loved as lovers do, when the ardor of rapt 
emotions stir the heart’s deep center to its fathomless 
depths of love. Moda had noted a change of late in 
Delevia. While she seemed devoted to his domestics 
and her devotional duties, yet she was away more and 
seemed dreamy and abstract, becoming, daily, more and 
more like the unknown quantity which woman is. 

It was a source of deep and poignant concern to Moda 
thus to behold the one bright flower of his earthly hope 
pining and drooping away for want of the celestial savors 
and effluvia of holiness diffused through the soul by more 
implicit faith in the ‘‘ lamb of God that taketh away the 
sin of the world.” He counseled her with tender paternal 
solicitude, perchance, to ascertain the cause of her deep 
abjection, when moving amid the emblems of that brighter 


80 


MONK MODA. 


life which Moda’s lavish expenditures had provided his 
monastery with. He failed, however, to detect the real 
cause ( for Vergeldero and Delevia were pledged to dis- 
close nothing of their love or its meetings to the good 
monk ) of her drooping spirits, but attributed it to some 
evil genius which the god of the lower world had libe- 
rated from chains to torment this Eden flower of his 
tender care. 

Moda, as a God-fearing monk, therefore addressed his 
petitions and most fervent prayers to the God of heaven,, 
and invoked aid of the celestials to protect Delevia’s soul 
from the ravages of this unholy tormentor. 

But, one morning, not many suns hence, what was 
Moda’s fatal forethought but to have revealed before his 
very eyes, as he looked out from the door of his monastery^ 
a sort of dew-lighted painting on the bright face of the 
breaking day, against the serene sky, a picture of 
Delevia and a bold moss-trooper, mounted on fleet Arabian 
steeds, hastening from the land of his fathers. 

It was as a picture or mirage moving before the eye 
of his soul, and remained but an instant; that instant, 
however, was long enough to reveal the fatal truth to 
Moda’s understanding that Delevia had eloped from the 
sanctuary of God with an unshrived knight. 

Oh, horror of horrors! Doom of all dooms! for such 
an angelical being as gentle Delevia to become the slave 
of some unchaste person, never sanctified by the holy 
incense diffused from the pure bright embers of refining 
salvation. 

Lonely, sorrowful, and dejected, did the good monk 
bow to his fate, mourning with his face in the dust, for 
many days, refusing to look upon the light of the sun 
lest he should see in its sacred beams some token of God’s 


MONK MOD A. 


81 


displeasure at His lowly follower’s un watchfulness over the 
tender charge given to his keeping. 

He subjected himself to the most extreme penance, 
thereby hoping to regain his former vantage ground of 
holiness with the Lord. 

Even Trusto and Yico seemed affected by reason of 
Delevia’s absence. The little birds which hid in the 
boughs of the drooping palm trees about the doorway, sang 
less sweetly; and, in the eventide, the lonesome katydid 
and the strayed cricket gave forth a more uncertain chirp 
amid the solemn sounds of night. The moon and stars 
seemed to dim and darken in the Autumnal glow which 
had, at this season of the year, shone glorious golden 
about the limitless expanse of the universe below. Even 
the sacred light of the incense flickered and flamed in 
an unnatural way, as if evil spirits were toying with its 
heavenly, hallowed burnings. The incense-purified 
censer about which had streamed an aureola of soft 
celestial light, now changed to the smallest possible 
point. 

It was indeed a time of heart sorrow and abject loneli- 
ness to the good monk; but, by doing double penance and 
crossing himself in fear, he regained, to a great extent, 
his former moods and manners. When he fully realized 
that she was gone, he appeared to be more grieved than 
when he renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, for 
that (to him) sacred enclosure of stone and masonry. 

He would have his day dreams and nightly reveries 
floating over the stream of time in fancy’s fairy pinnace 
with Delevia at its bows, the first to set foot on the 
celestial shore, just hid by a few clouds from his weary 
eyes, — weary with watching for Gabriel’s coming. 

He made all the inquiry of passers by (possible under 
6 


82 


MONK MODA. 


the circumstances) concerning Delevia, and learned that 
her lover was an Arabian conqueror of some fortune and 
favor in the Spanish court, about whose vice-polluted 
borders he had for years held sway. A bold, bad leader, 
in the wickedness of a wicked age. A desecrator of 
thrones and shrines. A villain at heart with a fair face, 
veiled in the devil’s livery, was this brigand, and she, the 
gentle Delevia, had gone, gone far hence, to be his part- 
ner in the play of pandemonium there enacted. 

As these thoughts ran through his mind, stirring its 
deep, deep center, a sort of shade passed over his patri- 
archal features which was indicative of the soul’s distress. 

These facts gleaned hastily, and somewhat unsatisfac- 
torily, created new sources of alarm in Moda’s mind. 
At times, he half formed the resolve to go in quest of the 
gentle Delevia, and, if possible, gain her back to holiness 
and to heaven. But, remembering his vow never more to 
mix or mingle with the world, he was restrained from so 
doing, for, should he go on such a quest, he must, of 
necessity, forego some of the solemn rite and ritual which 
he so strenuously adhered to in the monastery. 

Pity it was to see the good old man, well stricken in 
years, with beard and hair of silver hue, wandering about 
those prescribed bounds in that abstract manner when the 
body wanders on unmindful of the missing soul, tempo- 
rarily withdrawn, to contemplate scenes of celestial sun- 
light which come floating quite near this earth, when we 
are favored with glimpses of the immortality beyond. 

He pictured to his mind her fate, tracing by the most 
extravagant imaginings her future through all its wind- 
ings, on, and on, to the last gasp of dying mortality. ’Tis 
little wonder that the mind of this pious old man brooded 
on her destiny, when ’tis remembered that there were but 


MONK MODA. 


83 


two objects left for his adoration ; the one in heaven, the 
other on the earth. The one his God. The other his 
Delevia, yes, his Delevia, although his lips had never 
met hers, and his holy hands had never fondled the fair 
form of that gentle maiden, lovely in the extreme. 
The longings of love. The links of affection between 
them had never been welded by Cupid’s painful welding 
hammer, yet her strange taking off by a rude rake of the 
desert, wounded Moda’s soul and awoke in his being all 
the fire of an enthusiastic nature. 

Did the old man now love? Yes, he loved the angel 
image of his dear Delevia. He pondered long and deeply 
on her divine shadowing which had been opening and 
ripening to view through all the years of her stay at the 
monastery, and the one crowning hope of the good monk 
was to see her, sometime, beyond the Jordan, where the 
fair delectable hills arise in serene grandeur, crowned 
with a coronation of golden jewels of more splendid lustre 
than the pillars of Chilminar revealed to the delighted 
eyes of the Peri, in quest of that sacred gift with which 
to pass the gates of gold. 

But now, alas ! ’Twere worse than chance, the barest 
chance, should her training in divine things gain her soul 
entrance at the gate of God, as against the undue influ- 
ence of Vergeldero daily thrown about her. 

In truth the good Moda despaired of ever realizing the 
consummation of his blissful dream, viz. : the meeting in 
the spirit world. 

The days seemed to glide wearily away. The length- 
ening shadows grew on apace. The clouds seemed tinged 
with a more sombre hue, and the earth seemed to grow 
more hard arnd harsh to his worn and wounded knees bent 
in attitude of worship. Yet he prayed on as the years 


84 


MONK MODA. 


fled with no tidings from Delevia; waiting for the sum- 
mons, waiting for the few receding suns to set, and the 
few remaining sands of life to trickle through the hour- 
glass of time. Waiting for the golden bowl to be broken 
and shattered by the current of counter fears, which are 
produced by the strife of spirits (good and bad), contend- 
ing for the possession of his, and every other mortal’s soul 
veering over the bank of darkness into the beyond, the 
beyond, far past the by, and the be, all. 

A change came over Moda. He felt lonely and ready 
to rest ; so he clad himself in the sacred panoply of the 
mosque which he had gathered about him, and with the 
most solemn care and caution, went through the rite and 
ritual of the devotional exercises to the end ; and then he 
laid down on a sort of couch or lounge, to take his last 
rest, with a small Bible clasped in his hand. From 
thence, the good Moda never arose again to quench or 
replenish the burning incense. 

He was dead, dead to earth, but alive to that better and 
brighter realm above, where silvery waters ripple over 
golden sands, and heavenly harps sound the carols of 
paradise. The door remained open, and Trusto seemed 
to realize that his master was bidden away, for he went 
out on the landscape, and began a piteous, doleful howl 
of grief to the sky, such a howl as dogs only can groan 
out in their dumb dolefulness when death’s angel cometh. 

The howls of the dog soon attiacted the attention of 
passers-by, who resorted to the monastery, and found Moda 
dead, with the cat Yico gasping in the dying throes of 
death, for the taking away of her master. 

But a few seconds elapsed, and the feline underwent 
the last earthly change from activity to inactivity ; but, 
who shall say whether all of Yico remained there in death. 


MONK MOD A. 


85 


or went searching for Moda’s soul round another monas- 
tery in the ^un lands of eternal light, yes, who shall say ? 

Faithful hands were summoned, and the body of Moda 
was removed to the grove of palm trees, and there buried 
according to the monkish ritual which obtains in the 
Arabian lands. 

Many, many days thereafter, the dog Trusto stood 
guard over his master’s grave, as if chained to the spot by 
some instinct other than that of the brute as defined in 
the books. He too, died, and w^asted away like Yico, 
without a burial. 

Delevia’s fate unknown, unsung, and unmourned, 
remains to this day a mystery; although some controversy 
exists as to whether or not, at her death, the soul entered 
paradise or purgatory, or the lower world as a fitting 
guide for Vergeldero to the door of Pluto’s court. 

’Tisnot, and doubtless will not be known, for the events 
narrated herein, occurred long years and years ago. But 
hope suggests the better destiny; for her soul was so angel- 
ical ere Vergeldero met her ; and she may have retained 
enough of the divine nature to pass her soul within the 
holy gate when she, too, went on that strange, wide, wild 
flight of flights, into the dark curtained world. 

Would that it may be true. That Moda and Delevia 
may be seen to stand crowned brightly over on the beau- 
tiful mount of God in the realm of souls, amid that greatest 
and grandest of assemblages, which earth’s millions are 
to make up. 


MERRY MAY. 


The birds will soon come again with their warbling 
notes and beautiful plumage, and all the earth will laugh 
at the approach of Merry May; gathering bud and blos- 
soms in silver-tipped slippers with laugh that brings to 
life those love thoughts which the winter’s chill hath 
frozen. 

Can’t you see her coming in the distance, with turban 
of silken green, with sparkling diamonds in her hair, 
and face and form like that of an angel? 

And, hark to the distant strains of music, borne on 
the breath of spring, from her sylvan lute, made of leaves 
from the Tan-Sein tree, which grows over the tomb of 
that illustrious musician of other times. The little fays 
and fairies which glide along on either hand are in 
ecstacies at the maiden’s glee, as she scatters bud and 
blossom to the wooing winds. 

Up the hill, and on, they come, a merry group, with 
Cupid in the van; and, behold, e’en now his silvered 
bow is bended with string of gold, and his diamond 
pointed arrows reflect a brilliant sheen, as the softened 
sunlight intercepts their tinseled entanglements, and the 
timbrel’s talking time, in the hand of Virgin Spring 
(86) 


MERKY MAY. 


87 


leads on the celestial choir, with a uniformity beyond 
that of earthly pomp and pageant. 

Altogether, that bright, beaming cavalcade shineth 
like some rare illumined orb, which has wandered 
without the bounds of paradise, amid the stillness of a 
celestial eventide falling on God’s universe. 

The crown of jeweled lustre, on the forehead of 
angel May, glows like a golden beam from Allah’s throne; 
see, the air grows clear, with spectral light, about that 
company, as they come, an odoriferous perfume arises on 
the incense-freighted breeze. 

The birds of paradise, which have alighted in the green 
foliage of yonder grove, glow golden in the slanting 
sunbeams; and the forest songsters seem alive to the 
beautiful azure hues which deck the flower and the leaf; 
for they flit gaily on, warbling, as they go, songs which 
sound like the notes of a diviner minstrelsy, borrowed 
from birds of beauty, which warble sacred symphonies 
amid groves beyond. 

The mistletoe bough, the green of the thistle, and 
the gilt of the ivy vine all blend in a beauty, which 
hand of man never painted, brush of angel or artist 
divine hath been there and left these hues of heaven in 
grove and bower, on carpet green, on the red-lipped 
edges of the lily, and the rose-bud’s blushing bloom. 

Forest fairies, with sandal-shod slippers, braided of 
green and emerald, hath played upon the lawn, before 
the risen sun shed his smiling rays on nature’s meadows, 
fashioned fair enough to be the tufted carpet on which 
angel footfalls from the borders of paradise wake no sound, 
in the shade of whose green growing groves, the gods, 
from the bowers of bliss stand, though unseen to mortal 
eyes, viewing the beauty of angel May, with all the 


88 


3IEKKY MAY. 


heralds of heaven at hand to lend a charm to the domin- 
ion, over which she is crowned its beautiful queen. 

Such a morn of majesty, such a day of delight, 
such a scene of saintliness, the dullness of mortal eyes 
may not see, but when the thrill of a life within bursts 
control and a sort of celestial mirage falls on the enrapt- 
ured gaze like a shower of gold thrown over the walls 
of paradise for the sport of the Peris and the pas- 
time of the Empyrean spirits, then we may behold its 
beauties. 

The eye of that soul which is gifted with the faculty of 
a more celestial vision on the morn of May, can and does 
see, shed over the green carpet of earth, something, nay, 
much of the diversified beauty of the Master’s skill whose 
unrestrained hand is touching up those mansions in the 
realm of song with hues of the heavenly habitation, for 
those who quit the May decked with crowns of glorious 
sunshine. 

But see ! merry May and her retinue of divinities 
engage for mirth and pastime in a social on the green; 
the picnic in the grove, where dozens of youthful 
maidens, pure as the spirits of heaven, form circling bands 
of pleasure which makes the hour more holy and the 
sight more heavenly. 

Dull, indeed, must his or her eyes be who has no orb of 
vision with which to behold foreshadowed in the 
earthly pathway, some of the beauties and pleasures 
of paradise. 

Those little fairies and woodland nymphs are heaven’s 
heralds sent abroad from its glorious golden gateways and 
walls of jasper gemmed with jewels to deck the earth with 
a sort of shadowing of the shaded realm which man calls 
heaven. 


31ERRY 31AY. 


89 


That angel bright which we call the Merry May is 
heaven’s queen sent to preside over the mildest and 
most lovely season of the twelve divisions of the year, 
and would that her reign might continue longer, for 
it is indeed a picture of paradise to look on the silent 
lake, or the laughing lawn begemmed with dewy grass of 
a bright May morning. 

Reader, did you ever stand on some favorite landscape 
in the early light, when its flowers and its blooms 
were bathed with the dews which fall like liquid ether 
in the spring-time of the May — ^just to realize the influ- 
ence of such a scene and season on the soul? 

If you never have and will do so, you will be surprised 
to learn lessons of a new life which will there be born 
in your being and which will move the soul to a love of 
the sublime and the beautiful that you never dreamed 
lay slumbering in your bosom. 

You will realize that you are most wonderfully made, 
and that there is aniysterious chord within, which vibrates 
in perfect unison to the beauty of God’s universe ; thus 
most positively and plainly demonstrating that the same 
hand that formed the lily and gave the verdure to the 
grass which so beautifies the landscape, also formed 
the soul and attributes, for there is a sympathy 
between the two which could only have been created by 
the same master workmanship. 

Is not the May and its beautiful scenery almost a 
heaven here below, and do not bright angels of that 
upper sphere, though unseen to our mortal eyes, visit 
this world at such seasons when wearying of the pleasures 
above? 

The lily’s lovely lips, the tulip’s purple vine, and the 
blushing verbena’s slender stem, give to the scene and the 


90 


MERRY MAY. 


season a coating not of mortal make-up. The twining ivy 
vine, the myrtle and the asphodel hold heavenly hues; the 
exotic rose, transplanted from other climes, the eglantine 
and harebells blush in the breeze’s incense, casting a 
delicious odor, while the foxglove, the moss verbena and 
the buttercup retain something of the night’s delicious 
dews which sparkle in the sunbeam as he mounts the 
zenith on his accustomed round. 

The blackbirds, with now and then a white one in their 
midst, like a spirit from heaven, the red-breasted 
robins, and the wrens, warbling their notes of love, 
drive the sparrow hawks away. 

’Tis delightful to hear their blended carols borne on the 
balmy breeze, while some barefoot boy, driving the 
oows to pasture, with his careless shout, and some 
milking maid with her overflowing pail, varies the 
forest songster’s strains with a bit of a love line, or a 
heavenly thought hymned to the harp of the church 
ritual; while some early woodman, with his trusty axe, 
works away in yonder forest, felling with a will, whose 

lusty knocks re-echo many a rood,” sending a kind of 
shiver fluttering in the breeze, for the fall of the forest tree 
doth but fitly presage the fall of man and all of the ani- 
mated kingdom. 

May is the beginning, the pulseless motions of Decem- 
ber is the ending. 

But hence such thoughts of sadness amid all this mirth 
of May, for every hill-top blooms with beauty, every bower 
invites to its sylvan couch of love, and mated are the 
feathered songsters, the fearless furry kind that play and 
gambol in yonder dell; surely this is no season to dream 
of shadows and of shades. 

Listen to the breezy sound of those myriad bees gather- 


MERRY MAY. 


91 


ing honey from every cup and blossom that invites their 
wooing. 

Not a drone or a sluggard may be seen in the midst or 
about the borders of this lovely landscape which we have 
selected to look upon, located in the temperate zone, and 
watered with the dews of heaven that trickle down 
through the net-work of an ambient sky. 

The sailor’s eyes which never see such lovely scenes, or 
the soldier’s angry soul that never softens, surrounded by 
such loveliness, misses the most of life; though the one 
may discover a continent, and the other conquer an 
empire; the one may become renowned in maritime dis- 
coveries, and the other gain the warrior’s glory; but they 
miss so much of life’s happiness in failing to commune 
with nature at such a season, that a dwarfishness of soul 
is the sure result. Gifts of enterprise, or that of destruc- 
tion may be developed very greatly. None will question 
the laudable vocation of the sailor (unless, indeed, he 
throws his life away by a sure suicide in the ice-bound 
regions of the North, seeking to discover an open sea) in 
locating homes for men; but many may justly question 
the soldier’s art while he introduces many badges of 
mourning and woe into the homes of the race, that he 
may grandly ride in a gilded chariot up the hill of fame, 
to secure its crowning honors from a few misguided mor- 
tals, who are very soon to pass onward to the great day 
beyond the river, where no crown of human glory shall 
avail, no matter on whose temples it be borne, or how 
great the monarch’s majesty who moves down to the land- 
ing for a passage hence. 

At this season of the year. Nature, veiled in her ver- 
dant costume of beautiful and varied hues, presents pict- 
ures of landscape loveliness, and of rural beauty, and mild 


92 


MERRY MAY. 


mellowness, which awakens in the soul of the beholder 
that better and primitive nature of man, with which the 
Creator endued him in the garden of Eden ere the trail 
of the serpent left its hideous track on the laughing lawn,, 
where angels and where gods met earth’s favored mortals, 
and conversed in the familiar intercourse of a celestial 
dialect, thus uniting their mortal and divine loves with- 
out molestation or restraint. 

But although the track of the serpent is visible in every 
fair field of flowers, and a shadow which presages change 
hangs hovering in the horizon, there is a loveliness as of 
Eden purity, and a fragrance of spicy perfumes that go 
forth to greet God’s glad children in the May-time, which 
is accelerating and heavenly — which the senses never 
catch in any portion of the year save the May. 

What conception can paint a purer image in earth or 
air, than the fresh daisy, the purple pink, or the mavis 
with her song? 

What celestial sight falls more heavenly on angelic 
eyes in the Eden beyond, than that of scores of laughing 
maidens bedecked with flowers of blooming radiance on 
a May-day morning? 

The Mohammedan Arab may roam his sandy deserts 
on yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, where never a flower 
blooms; sustained, through task and trial, by his sublime 
faith, and gain a wreath of golden rosebuds at the end; 
but, to me, it seems diviner far to worship the Ruler of 
earth and skies from the blooming loveliness which He 
has spread around, and to receive from God, through 
Nature’s hand, His real rose- wreaths and tulip blossoms. 

The Hindoo mother may bow to wood and stone, thus 
worshiping a lifeless deity, which her darksome faith hath 
taugrht her to revere: but more fortunate we whose faith 


MERRY MAY. 


93 


lias had its founding in the land where God’s flowers bloom 
fresh from His loving hand, and where mankind holds 
direct communication with Him through the medium 
of prayer; where our little infant pledges of love learn 
to lisp His name, from mamma’s knee, ere they can 
walk. 

How could man live in such a clime of fragrance with- 
out worshiping the Deity? When he looks around on 
the blooms of earth, and the supernal beauty of His 
handiwork, which beams in such a subdued lustre from 
the face of angel May and her myriad fairies, frail and 
fond as the Peris of paradise, who wander without the 
gates seeking the boon that gains admission there? 

Through such a scene of loveliness the brook bubbles 
on its way, with a brighter and more crystal gleam; song- 
sters of the wood warble a more melodious carol, seem- 
ingly inspired by the radiance around; school children go 
to school with lighter hearts; lovers love with a more 
ardent thrill of affection and adoration, when the blooms 
of paradise are spread out on the lap of earth; the heavy- 
hearted laborer, whose spirit is subdued and partly broken 
by the stress of penury and toil, goes to his task with a 
more elastic tread, when the song-bird sings a strain of 
sympathetic cheer, and the green carpet of earth is beauti- 
fully interspersed with flower and creeping vine; and even 
the tramp, which no one cares for, save the Ruler of the 
skies and His holy angels, will loiter by the way to glean 
a forget-me-not, or beautiful flower in all of its pristine 
purity, to grace the tattered buttonhole at his breast, or 
from whence to inhale a free breath without begging it 
from some covetous churl, who fell heir to his possessions 
through rich relations, for the lack of which he would be 
tramping more forlorn looking than the moving monument 


94 


MEEKY MAY. 


of mercy whom he refuses, with a frown, the hospitality 
of the slop-barrel. 

Reader, did you never view the song-bird’s breast 
when pouring its almost divine lay out on the balmy 
breezes, at such a season of the year, and did you not 
observe the trembling thrill of joy which moved that little 
breast, by the fluttering of the golden-hued feathers which 
coated it? And have you not observed how different the 
scene when the song-bird tried to sing at that season of 
the year when the leaves were falling and the flowers 
were dying, touched by King Frost’s reign? The song 
seems to die in the atmosphere, and a chill from the 
North almost freezes the bird’s little breast as it sits on 
some solitary limb lonely, left from the flock who have 
southward flown. 

To me it always seems sad to see such a little lonely 
looking spirit of God’s feathered kingdom ; and once I 
mind of seeing, in my school days, a drooping swallow on a 
dead December limb, which with kindly care I caged and 
tried to comfort, but it grieved and grieved till it grieved 
its little life away. I buried it tenderly beneath a willow 
bough, and placed a kind of bird grave-stone there, in my 
boyish mood, to tell the place again. 

Reader, do you know that since I have grown to man- 
hood and wandered far, far away, I have twice returned 
to that same willow bough to look, to listen, and to think. 

The little stone was gone, defaced by time, or, per- 
chance, some ruthless hand hath wantonly removed it,, 
but the thoughts of childhood came clustering there, and 
scenes, as of the flown time, arose to my mind’s eye. 

Many Mays had passed, many Decembers gone, but no 
change in my memory respecting the lone swallow’s fate 
had been made. Peaceful seemed the place, a spirit-spell 


MEKRY MAY. 


95 


filled the brooding silence round. And, when I turned to 
go, how my crisp foot-falls sounded amid the silence of 
my soul’s deep reverie, into which I had fallen, respecting 
friends who had been borne to places of silent repose, like 
the dead swallow of other years. 

Oh, if there is a time when the soul’s sacred emotions 
flow, unrestrained by this weight of dying clay, which 
encumbers it, methinks it is under such circumstances and 
surroundings. The blooms of May may look fresh, or the 
snows of December be pure and spotless, but when those 
whom we loved are gone and can not share the joys of 
our coming, a shade seems to be walking at our sides, as 
we wend on, and on, through the silent rooms, the 
deserted avenues, and the weed-grown vistas of the old 
homestead. 

X 

Mayhap the strifes of life have made the bosom less 
resolute, and the soul more susceptible to the thoughts 
which such surroundings suggest; but true it is we are 
sadly broken in the presence of buried joys and the 
remembrance of faces gone forever. We are saddened 
when hopes are flown and anticipated fair days are turned 
to lowering, cloudy, gloomy ones. The beauty of the 
flower, the light of the lily, and all the blooms of the 
heather can not then light the eye with joy or the soul 
with gladness. 

But, when the May comes round again, and we are far 
from the old homestead haunts, distance and time permit 
us once more to walk forth and be glad with the gladness 
of the time, and rejoice with God’s vocal choristers, which 
make the meads and meadows ring with minstrelsy. 

’Tis then that the atmosphere is ladened with subdued 
mellowness and mildness, approaching that of supernal 
airs, as they waft the silvered leaves on golden branches 


96 


MERRY MAY. 


ringing the melodious bells of heaven, and moving the 
congregations of the saints to worship and to sing. I 
more than half believe that the great God who rules the 
universe, and “ tempers the breeze to the shorn lamb,” 
permits a part of those supernal airs of the heavenly Eden 
to waft across the river of death, hitherward, to cheer his 
faithful ones, waiting for the summons. 

True it is that some hallowed spell makes the breath of 
May more heavenly and inhalesome than that of any other 
month of the year. 

The cool September breeze may be healthful and life- 
giving, the June morning joyous and beautiful, but a 
happy May-day is the more heavenly to those whose 
powers of perception are acute enough to discern the 
heavenly, and to enjoy its deliciousness. 

To all, this faculty is not alike given, some, with their 
dulled and deadened sense of the sublime and beautiful, 
might stand, even at the door of Paradise, and never know 
the thrill of happiness which Moore’s Peri felt, as the 
repentant tear gained her admission past the holy angel, 
keeping the gate to the joys beyond. 

Some, whose thoughts never raise above that of duping 
their fellow men, and the hovel of the hog, might be sur- 
rounded by the fairest blooms of May, and the most 
verdant grass that ever graced the carpet of the gods, 
and they would see nothing in it all but “ pesky weeds” 
or “ feed for steers.” While other natures, more attuned 
to melodies celestial, and more susceptible to the deli- 
ciousness of a supernal breath from heaven, would be 
moved almost to madness by the thrill of joy which would 
set their finely fibered souls in rapturous adoration, at the 
beauty and the grandeur of God’s groves and lawns, on a 
May morning, so full of mirth and melody. 


MERRY MAY. 


97 


But while we leave the Merry May and her fairies 
•sporting amid the flowers, for a time, let us see who comes 
yonder on the nearer margin of the landscape, with laugh- 
ter and with song? 

’Tis Youth. Quite youthful and gay ; buoyant like boy- 
hood, bounding onward, with a helmet of gold, a girdle 
'Of amber, and buskins of gilt, jasper and green. Fresh 
as the lily, and beautiful as morning, the sunshine falls in 
^reflected rays from his suit of silvered sheen. 

He prattles, lie tattles, lie talks to flower and fay on the way. 
He joins in the gambols, the rambles, the romps of the fairies. 
His eyes sparkle with life and with love. 

His lips so ruby, so round, and so red. 

Smile so lovely and sweet, pout and pucker so neat, 

And the curls of his hair whirl in the air 
Around a forehead so lovely and fair 
That the birds from the tree, and the rabbits in glee 
Are fluttering and skipping about him to see 
The springs and the rings of his witchery. 

Hark to the shout, the revel, and rout. 

The romp and the pomp of the lawn round about; 

Oh! isn’t it fine, delicious, divine. 

To look on this lovely gleam, this sport on the green, 

This side of the winding-up scene? 

Youth lingers along to pluck some flowers by the 
•wayside, to love, to lisp, and be joyous and gay with 
laughing Nature around; and the most antic fetes doth 
-he perform. 

There is pleasure in his laugh; there is merriment in 
ihis eye, and love upon his lips. He seems to be entreat- 
ing the angel of Hope to remain longer, and at the same 
time to be looking forward, with much joy and pleasure, 
to the starry lights which sparkle like crystalline caskets 
in the sky. 

7 


98 


MERKY MAY. 


He wastes no time thinking of the dim, dark, outlines> 
of a cloud which, e’en now, is emerging slowly into view 
from the bright horizon’s edge, destined, ere long, to 
darken the sun’s golden rays falliug so resplendent on his 
hopefulness. 

Amid the flowers, the grasses and the ferns, here and 
there, he laughs and rambles; light of heart, fleet of 
limb, and sportive as the forest fawn. 

This gay young trumpeter gladdens the pleasure-seek- 
ers, wizard-faced pennycatchers, and poverty-stricken 
penurists, who are all strolling along life’s walks 
some, where flowers grow; some, where damps of death 
are settling down; some, where chills and cheap things 
checker their lot. 

Thus goes life, thus goes youth, and thus cometh 
change, the fatal change, the end all here. What a mirror 
presented for the reflection of eternal things! 

The Merry May with all her retinue of fairies,, 
moving over the flowers and the laughing lawns of earth,, 
sporting amid rose leaf and lily bloom, which seem lovely 
as a shower of gold falling from the walls of paradise. 

While gay, buoyant and hopeful youth goes bounding 
on, with little or no thought of the gathering cloud at 
the distant horizon’s edge, or the approach of the two* 
unwelcome guests who are to follow, changing the scene^ 
changing the field, and changing the fair day. 

Sport on, thou buoyant and hopeful youth. Gain golden 
pleasures while the mild celestial loveliness of the breeze 
waves thy flaxen curls, and tinges thy rounded cheek 
with the hues of heaven, and gives to thine elastic tread^ 
that exquisite sensation of joy which those do not feel 
who have passed the dividing line between youth 
and age. No guest but greets thee gladly: no 


MEERY MAY. 


99 


grove of pleasure-seekers but makes room for thy 
peerless presence, and no hall hung with the richest 
tapestry, but holds a place in the set for thy choosing. 
In all departments of life’s gaiety, on all occasions, thou 
art a welcome guest, and art tendered the most sparkling 
wine, the most favored place in the lady’s bower. 

The very atmosphere which thou breathest seems 
fresher and more invigorating than that inhaled by those 
who have reached the half-way station, the three-quarter 
pole, or the out-going stretch. Few shaded shapes around 
thee gather, and if one, perchance, should come out of the 
usual course, it is but to hurl a shining dart, dangerous 
and deadly in aim, and then away, without lingering 
in the back-ground, as when age is tottering to the 
brink. 

Oh, favored one, it would almost seem in the creation of 
a universe, in the structure of a human kingdom, that thy 
place should have been perpetual, without the change 
which is marked on all things earthly. 

Thy features, thy form and thy freshness may, per- 
chance, have been retained to grace God’s celestial sys- 
tem, which holds sway above the delectable hills, where 
the airs and the rivers bear perpetual youth to all who 
breathe and drink thereof, and where no decrepit shade, 
or sight of sadness, ever enters. 

We are wont to fancy that we miss much when our 
youths are gone and the fingers of time become visible 
upon our features; but, methinks, vastly more shall we 
miss than the charm of perpetual youth, if we miss the 
gate of gold, the fount of crystal waters, or the throne of 
God beyond; there, all charms that enter that city of 
refuge, abideth forever. 

What is dying here shall be living there, and sins that 


100 


MERRY MAY. 


are living here shall be dying there. Beautiful ending, 
sublime consummation of a supernal design; from the con- 
templation of its rare grandeurs, a thrill of life and joy 
will flow, which no queen of May or youthful herald hath 
ever known. 

But, behold once again. Who is yon ancient looking 
form, with tottering step, and stafi* in hand, approaching 
on the nearer margin of the lawn, following in the foot- 
steps of Youth ? 

’Tis Age, with silvered head, dimmed eye, and counte- 
nance bland, void of expression. His step sounds 
strangely, his cough seems hollow, his bearing is bent 
and bowed, ancient is the garb and cravat he wears. 

He looks now and then at a flower, with a sort of sor- 
rowful smile, as he totters and hobbles on; but seldom 
stoops to pluck one. 

Time has touched his frame with his tingling wand to 
leave its marks thereon. There is a kind of tremulous 
quiver to his hand, a perceptible shaking of the head, 
and an unsteadiness in his step which is painful to 
ponder. 

He is alone, or nearly so. The rabbits have gone to 
the ferns, the fairies to the woods, and Merry May stands 
at a distance, with crest-fallen features, as if in honor of 
the hoary pilgrim passing. The very atmosphere seems 
changed to a heavier fall, and the blooms about his weary 
feet lie crushed and bleeding, and only now and then 
some fair-faced angel, or tender hand tarries long enough 
with him to supply some necessitous want, and then is off 
again. The horizon, once so beautiful and fair, hangs 
hazy now with slanting raindrops jetting down. The airs 
grow cold about him, although the May-time has not 
quite gone. When the sun shines through some rifted 


MERRY MAY. 


101 


cloud, the beams fall but to make him pine for its love- 
liness of other days. 

The flowers beside his path look not as they used to 
do. With his age, they have seemed to grow old and 
faded, and the grass that grows between, seems more 
crisp, and crinkled to the touch. The once sparkling 
brook, upon whose bosom golden fishes used to sport and 
play, holds now a deadened sheen, while its waters 
flow on more sluggish and slowly; and when a throstle’s 
note comes from the grove, it falls not as musical as of 
yore ; nor does the over-flying pigeon’s wing cut the hazy 
vapor of the skies, with as swift a sweep as in the olden 
time. 

He pauses, leaning on his staff now and then, to rest, to 
ponder, and to muse. Some bright gleams, at times, 
break out of the atmosphere above and beyond all mortal 
mouldering things, which lights up his ancient eye, and 
fills his faded features with a transient beam of hope ; ah, 
yes, transient and fleeting, soon gone, and he sinks back 
again into his former dream-like reverie, musing lonely 
over vanished visions, and the dampness of the dying 
day. 

It seems lonely indeed, that sort of loneliness approach- 
ing sadness, to see him now in old age almost deserted, 
when in youth so many joyous friends flocked around to 
cheer. 

Methinks, mankind hath far missed the true philosophy 
of life ; for, if ever there is a time, after the helpless days 
of infancy, when friends are needed, comforts required, 
and soothing solace eminently proper to be given, it is 
when our aged ones are lingering at the brink of the 
grave, waiting for the shadows to longer grow, and the 
brittle thread of life to break. It requires strong men to 


102 


MERRY MAY. 


compose themselves sufficiently (and such seldom do so), 
to prepare for the step in the dark, which lies between two 
eternities. 

That leap from the land, 

That sweep from the strand, 

Which none doth understand. 

How needful is the tender attention of very dear 
friends in the last hours of the feeble and old, standing 
just at the door of eternal things! 

Not unfrequently, the aged father, mother, friend, is 
left absolutely alone in their feebleness, and how often 
we hear that she or he ‘‘ was found dead in bed.” 

Found dead in bed? Yes, with sons and daughters 
away on the pleasure drive, getting the so-called “good 
things out of life,” and enjoying the world as it goes. 

Base ingratitude, contemptible behavior toward those 
aged ones, who spent the cheer and hope of their best 
days in caring for, and in comforting you. 

How often has mother tucked the clothes around you 
at night, and father shown his tender care by providing 
for your wants, before you were old enough for a drive on 
life’s pleasure way ; at a time before you met that 
stranger whom you now love to the sad neglect of the 
aged ones at home ? 

At home, did I say? Yes, sometimes, and some- 
times with the stranger, and sometimes gone “over the 
hills to the poor-house.” 

Oh, what a picture of sad realities such contemplations 
awaken! The silvered head, the bowed and bended 
form, and the feeble, tremulous hand, exerting its tired 
movements to supply the cravings of hunger, and a cov- 
ering from the cold ; with sons and daughters (not unfre- 
quently) living in palatial mansions, and holding the 


MERRY MAY, 


103 


fetes of the season; with no room for father or mother 
there. 

Sad mistake; misguided son; undutiful daughter. Do 
you know that no mansion is too grandly furnished and 
no chair is too golden gilded for the occupancy of a 
father or mother, clad as you should clothe them? And 
do you know that no favorite invited one makes as becom- 
ing an appearance in the home social, as those to whom 
you are indebted for your life and its enjoyments? Let 
us, then, be very tender of those fading and faded 
^flowers of mortality, while yet they grace our homes; for 
there seems to be* a sort of silvered sunbeam breaking 
around their aged temples, which, methinks, is the flash- 
ing of that Eden fairness beyond. 

But see, he is almost across the flowery lawn, and 
Merry May has ventured to call back her fairies, for 
another festival. 

All seems pleasant and joyous again; for naught but 
the far off shadow, the dim outlines of the aged form 
breaks on the distant horizon; while a kind of celestial 
radiance lights up once more the surroundings, almost 
akin to that fair light which broke upon the Merry 
May, when she first entered on the nearer margin 
■of the lawn, beaming like a jewel bright of hope. Even 
the birds have attuned their warbled notes of love and 
gladness once more, and the scene grows grand, 
glorious, gleeful, lovely. 

Oh, fair appointed glimpse of heaven, mayest thou 
linger long; may cloud of somber hue never flit across 
thy brilliant pathway, through the darkling dome of 
beaven. May thy soft and tender music bring a charm to 
yon train of pleasure-seekers. 

But, hist! hark! hold! what form is that which speeds like 


104 


MEEKY MAY. 


a gloomy ghost within that distant light, breaking beyond^ 
the fair company? Ah! ’tis the spectral shade of Deaths 
and a universal terror owns his dread approach. 

The Merry May folds closer about her fragile forr» 
those robes of splendor, to guard against the chill thrown 
on the distant landscape. The atmosphere, once so radi~ 
ant, is laden with the dews and damps of Death; and 
that eye of heavenly lustre, and cheek of rarest bloom, 
grows dim and dark, as the shade nearer comes. 

His supremest glee seems to be, 

In viewing the consternation he has made 
With her fair and tangled braid ; 

Which loosely falls, disordered now, 

About her bright angelic brow. 

The air grows cold and chill; a weight is at her heart; 
her wrists are pulseless, and the giddy whirl of her 
sickening brain owns that monster’s power. The reced- 
ing sun, above the horizon, once so fair, sinks dimly 
down, and the fays and fairies hide within leaf and tree, 
and Cupid hath spread his hitherto useless wings, and 
mounts the azure heights of air. 

The Virgin Spring grows crippled and old looking; a 
snowy whiteness tinges her locks; and she falters along 
like one struck of the palsy. 

A cold and comfortless breeze blows from the quick 
movements of this monster, as he gloats with horrid glee, 
muttering “ My time it is at merry-making; m}^ mirthful 
night is here,” and the very breath from his mouth 
chills and kills all within its compass. There is no forn> 
found within his reach, whether age or youth, bird or 
blossom, rabbit or roebuck, but yields to his chilling 
touch, and owns his dread approach. 

A universal stillness seems to reign. The black orbs- 


MERRY MAY. 


105 


of the rayless skies wander darkling in the heavens, and 
seem as if they were about to drop like lifeless aerolites- 
to the joyless and dying earth. The lawn, once so 
fragrant and so fair, now lies in a darksome waste; 
every living thing within his path fades and falls, as 
though the shadow of a fate had told their fore- 
appointed doom, and some infernal sprite was playing 
with fair forms that else had been eternal. 

He seems like a malignant deity, from some dark world 
of shades; brooding in his loneliness and wanton cruelty, 
come for Envy’s self or Spitework’s plague, to vex, kill, 
and slay forms immortal; whose loving hearts shrink from- 
the approach of this cold and stone-like stature, terrible 
to the human vision. Earth’s highest aspirations and most 
insane love of hoarded gold vanish like the mists before a 
July morn when the dull echo of his deadened footfalls 
are heard approaching. 

Oh, what a thrill of horror moves the body, as the 
consciousness flits the intelligence home to the heart, that 
it must submit to his cold embraces without further delay. 

To flee were vain, for he is as fleet of foot as erst 
engaged in the Olympic races, and much more so, for he 
has outrun and overtaken every athlete since those days,, 
and it is only a question of time, when he will outstrip 
the whole world in this race of life and death. No cun- 
ning of man’s hath devised a way round and out of his 
presence, other than the waking from the sleep of death 
that all must slumber in. No fount of youth, whose 
waters give perpetual healing, hath ever yet stayed his 
approaching steps; and at all attempts to avoid him (of 
course the author excepts those fortunate Bible charac- 
ters who went the short way to the city celestial) when 
the device has failed, his laugh seemed more hollow, null,. 


106 


MERRY MAY. 


and nerveless, as the strategist was detected and stricken 
down, just on the point (as he supposed) of making a 
discovery which would prolong both his life and his 
immortality here. 

But, alas! No youth, no stature, no manhood, can 
long breathe the charnel airs, and damps, which Death 
breathes, and retain his life lease. Death is a monarch of 
frightful mien, and universal sway; whose kingdom is the 
surface of this world, and the realm just below, where the 
dead are sleeping. Where, mayhap, he goes his rounds 
visiting those unfortunate mortals who are buried before 
life is extinct, there to grapple with Death, in all the 
frightful horrors of being entombed alive. 

He is sole monarch of a goodly kingdom; royal prince 
of a realm whose jurisdiction extendeth wide, the dumb 
god of an entranced land. 

Yes, he’s monarch of the lawn, and master of the Virgin 
Spring who hath taken flight and retreated to the far-ofiP 
bounds of the landscape and who now stands in the 
darksome fall of night, seemingly death-struck like her 
companion, the Merry May. 

Almost sin it is to think that two such fair and favored 
queens should be under the jurisdiction of such a heartless 
monarch, whom no mercy knows, and who listeneth not 
to entreaty or prayer, no matter from whose lips the same 
may come. 

Till Death appeared upon the margin of the landscape in 
all his terrors, this loving company were jubilant and gay; 
but now, what a sad contrast? the very air has changed 
to gloom, and lifeless things lie turning to taint and decay, 
like the airs freighted with dampness from the charnel- 
house of death, whose rank poisons, diffused for the living 
to inhale, is sure to invite the unwelcome visitant. 


MERKY MAY. 


107 


The Merry May and the Virgin Spring turn paler and 
more deathlike, and they fall lifeless corpses at the same 
instant, clasping their hands, while Death exults with 
come, my mistresses fair, to bridal -bed with me,” and his 
very breath, as he laughs out his strange joy, seems to 
send a shudder to their vanishing souls, as they wing 
the azure heights heavenward to a brighter and a more 
ethereal spring. 

But the mortal bodies of these two most beautiful vir- 
gins must sleep, indeed, in the bridal-bed with Death, 
under the mould, where hideous worms add the most 
loathing loneliness to that narrow house and dark. 

Death stands jubilant, viewing the sad and desolate 
scenery around, with a kind of self-satisfied expression on 
his horrid visage, whose weird ugliness must have been 
imparted by the god that rules the lower world, for 
methinks no Deity of celestial lands could have conceived 
such an ill-shapen, ill-favored face as that, with which to 
curse anything of life or of motion on this terrestrial 
ball. 

There isn’t a ray of light falls through the damp dark- 
ness, as Death turns and wends back over the desolate 
way whence he came, to see, perchance, if his work is 
done well, and if no life remains in form or flower fallen 
beside his path. 

His echoing footfalls break hollowly around the dead 
realm. But he’s master there, and lord high king of that 
domain ; and he seems to rule in the best of spirits, when 
there’s no life or motion to oppose his authoritative com- 
mands, promptly given and executed by himself, with all 
the caprice of a heartless conscience. 

Nature has, in mercy, veiled her face in impenetrable 
darkness, from looking on such a cheerless, sad scene. 


108 


MERRY MAY. 


and even the birds of passage on their way to other 
climes, are turned aside on their aerial flights, when they 
approach the outward folds of this darkness, and no Peri 
or ministering angel to man from the worlds of paradise is 
seen within that gloom. 

The vivid imagination of earth’s timid mortals have 
indeed filled the gloom and gateway hence with shades 
and shapes, with ghost-like goblins who keep a merry 
dance with death to cheer the monody of the dead reign 
below this animated sphere. With what horrid associa- 
tions and varied forms has not superstition surrounded 
this monster? 

I have always believed, for one, that the creation of 
those dread mystics arrayed in clean white grave clothes, 
had their origin in the wild and bewildered fancy of 
strangely overwrought imaginings. 

Death, I believe, is the only solitary, living thing, that 
moves about his spectral realm, from thence to here ; 
striking down the most blooming and buoyant of our 
land. 

Ah, thou terrible devouring tyrant, thou insatiate mon- 
ster, whence thy origin? Why hurlest thou thy invincible 
shafts of destruction at the fairest and most beautiful of 
the race ? What mandate of authority dare stay thy 
progress or reckon the ghastly victims of thy relentless 
march ? Why smitest thou down blooming and joyous 
youth bounding hopeful in the arena of life? Why hast 
thou introduced badges of mourning and woe into the 
many homes of the human family? What maliciousness 
prompts thy infernal will to commit daily depredations 
on the most beautiful forms and loving natures that the 
Eternal of Days has graced this earth with? Why dost 
thou find such supreme pleasure in hurling thy death darts 


MERRY MAY. 


109 


s,t the tender and loving blossoms which bloom about us 
everywhere, for, do we not need them to cheer the world 
with their friendliness? What soul-satisfying content- 
ment (if, indeed, thou hast a soul,) dost thou derive in 
gathering to thy dark domain earth’s little pledges of 
love? 

God only knoweth thy purpose, will and pleasure, in 
this devastating work which thou hast thus faithfully 
carried on through the ages, and which thou proposeth 
not to abandon while a shining mark remains to tempt thy 
skill, and test thy archery. Thy nature must be a com- 
bination of malice, hatred and revenge, for thou takest 
such delight in seeing the flowers fade, and the fair ones 
of this floating sphere turn to mould and muteness; or, 
is it because, forsooth, that thou thinkest they are more 
•charming and changeless when arrayed in the white 
robes which thou givest them to wear as they enter the 
shades of thy silent realm? 

Thou monarch of the ages, how many souls hast thou 
hastened thither since Time told his first birthday, and 
the world glided into space, from the hands of that 
eternal first cause, God supreme of all. 

Thou must have a goodly company, a numberless 
throng, gathered together by this time, which, mayhap, 
thou wilt regret to lose jurisdiction over, when the dawn- 
ing begins to break through thy dull, dead realm, and 
the shadows therein take on celestial apparel, fit for pre- 
sentation to the King of the realm of rest. 

But, then, it may not be amiss that thou should’st do a 
little mourning, when it is remembered the mourning and 
the sad lamentations which thou hast caused others down 
through the ages. 

But it is in vain to speculate about falling tears from 


110 


MERRY MAY. 


such a form, whose body is colder than ice, and whose heart 
is more stone-like than a stone; harder, deader, and more 
pulseless than a petrified substance which has been hard- 
ening for ages. No heart’s throbbing beat ever stirs thy 
constitution’s core, or a sympathetic thrill ever tingles 
thy cold, clogged veins. 

Thou art the one universal enemy of mankind, the one 
dreaded monster of the ages. Thou consulteth no 
superior, and thou bo west to no inferior; thy will is a 
mandate, and thy malice maketh a mournful movement 
when erst thou passeth by; thy shades are vastly thicker 
peopled than the round earth to-day. Many, very many,, 
generations sleep therein, waiting for the awakening, 
waiting for the end all here, the beginning of the hereafter. 

But look again, at the dark and rayless lawn, and 
behold this horrid shape of the ages standing, for once 
in blank amazement, because there are no more of the com- 
pany of the Merry May, or that of the Virgin Spring, to 
use his shining darts upon. He seems drooping and 
sad, because no other forms there are to furnish him 
pastime. He peers under his bony hand in all directions,, 
but naught of life can he see, except, mayhap, a flitting 
ghost or goblin, through the rayless gloom, as gloomy 
looking as himself. 

He lingers long enough to discover that his work is 
done, and well done, on that lawn, and then girds himself 
up, and goes skulking away to other scenes and sights, 
where he may ply his doleful doings of death anew. 

Thus, from one place and period of time, he migrates to 
another country, coming and going as occasion requires,, 
but never forgetting his task, or slighting the victims 
thereof. Round and round, always moving, never rest- 
ing, this enemy of the ages, this shade of grizzly shapes. 


MEREY MAY. 


Ill 


this deity of devilishness keeps up his sad havoc on all 
beneath the sun, whether plant, flower, animal or man, 
whate’er there is of life hath met him in his path, and 
been halted quite peremptorily. 

It seems like a strange spell, ^at which falls over the 
beautiful image of God, when it is borne to the silent 
chambers of the tomb, there to linger in that death-seem- 
ing state which nothingness knows, till a better era sets 
it free. 

But it may be necessary for the perfecting of its spot- 
less purity, ere it enters the gates, to take posses- 
sion of that endless inheritance, where the beautiful 
black-eyed houris of paradise and the pardoned peris 
join in songs of gladness at its welcoming in. 

Blessed thought, after all, grand and glorious awaken- 
ing, wonderful consummation of Jehovah’s stupendous 
plan, the crowning day, the resurrection from the dd'ad 
realm of nothingness, to enter in triumphal grandeur 
through the gate of heaven. 

Though shadows may gather here, and death may 
blight, at the crowning day ’twill all be past. 

One moment’s view of that realm so bright were worth 
years of the gayest pleasure-seeker’s life, that ever held 
the queens of fashion spell-bound with his fascinating 
waltz. Could we but realize half of the bliss which 
awaits the faithful beyond the borders, methinks we’d 
impatient grow, and long to be off on pilgrimage, to the 
gates of gold. 

In that region, celestial, that haven so fair, shall 
never come the Merry May as she cometh here, to droop 
and die; but we shall behold her crowned with a jasper 
coronet of glory, amid the fragrance and the blooms of a 
supernal realm, surrounded by the cherubs of heaven. 


112 


MERRY MAY. 


singing to the music of the chiming harebells borne 
on the airs of paradise, where walls of spotless purity 
serenely shine, and where swans of celestial seeming float 
on the purified lakelet’s side, where silvered fishes 
shine in a halo of glory, all their own, and doves of 
snowy whiteness perch on the palm trees’ leaves of 
overy joyous grove. 

What a contrast to think of, from the doom of the 
queen of beauty here ; what a glory of glories to behold 
where shining ones grace the delightful groves and the 
delectable mountain tops, the banks of the meandering 
streams and the golden floor of heaven, with the risen Son 
of God the center of all attraction, and the Eternal of 
Days supreme Ruler of the realm. 

Happy, indeed, the mortal whose passport is found of 
sufficient whiteness to admit him at the gate of St. Peter 
into the joys of the circle of the sanctified; but bliss past 
all telling to gain that station nearest the throne of God 
itself. 

Let the ages flit on, we can not miss that realm, if we 
follow the thread-like pathway which the Son of God 
•extended from earth to heaven, when vacillating Pilate, 
and the clamorous mob would not be pacified without 
staining their unholy hands in the life stream of the only 
pure Being that ever set foot upon our soil, or found a 
bed with beasts of burden. 

What a meeting for Prince and persecutors that last 
great meeting will be, before the final separation takes 
place! He to witness the glorious triumphs of His death, 
they to receive their sentence of doom for the eternal 
years. 

Let us then, my dear reader, live so faithful and so fault- 
less that when the crowning day shall come, our pass- 


MERRY MAY. 


113 


port will be taken at the gate of gold, for no supremer 
•purpose can engage the attention of an immortal soul 
than the securing of that realm of rest for an inheritance 
down through the ages, endless and eternal, where the 
•common enemy of mankind shall never enter to mar or 
‘to maim through Eternity’s celestial horologe. 


8 


LEAH, QUEEN OF WONDERLAND. 


In the Western Wonderland, amid its crags and peaks 
of mountain scenery, is located a valley verdant with 
bloom; where clear and limpid streams go rippling over 
sands of gold ; breathing a kind of subdued music on the 
radiant atmosphere, to the distant hills around. 

It was once my lot, in rambling, to enter this seques- 
tered vale, with jaded horse and hound, at the close of a 
tiresome day’s sport in hunting the fleet-footed deer, 
which, by wily turns, and native strategy, led my tried 
and tested horse far past the outmost stretch of comrade’s 
course that day. 

A spring of clearest crystal, babbling ’neath the branches 
of a lotus tree, served to slake the thirst of horse, hound 
and man. And, in native clover beds, my steed fed free, 
unhampered by saddle-girth or bridle-rein, while tired of 
the chase, my hound (one of St. Hubert’s breed), rested 
neath the shade of a cypress near at hand. 

But enchanted with the region so beautiful and fair, I 
wandered forth with fowling-piece to the margin of a 
lake whose broad expanse of waters seemed the embodi- 
ment of a celestial silence, shaded with a saintly shadow 
bearing inland in a skiff which betokened the finishing 
art of the red man. 


( 114 ) 


LEAH, QUEEN OF WONDERLAND. 


115 


Upon a nearer view, I beheld its sole and lone occu- 
pant to be a beautiful Indian maiden, of some seventeen 
summers, paddling gracefully to a sort of foot landing, 
near where my fancy had led me. In breathless silence I 
stood, fearing that a stir or whisper from me might alarm 
the fair form, like an angel of the lake and land which 
came curving shoreward with graceful sweep, parting the 
shining waters with silver tipped canoe. When, upon 
approaching the bank, she gracefully cast from her lifted 
hand a rope of golden threads, woven and inter- woven 
by skilled and careful hands, as a fastening for her boat. 

Then, with graceful bearing, she stepped lightly on the 
bank, revealing a wealth of raven hair and form of female 
loveliness which I had never beheld among the pale faces 
or any of the daughters of Eve. From her beaming orbs 
of darkened hue were emitted lovely splendors which the 
satiated sycophant of fashion never sees. 

Thereupon, removing my hat, as if addressing the queen 
of that lake and land, I said, with becoming modesty : 

“Pardon this intrusion, but, wearied with the chase, I’ve 
wandered here delighted as one who wanders among the 
spirit lands in quest of some mortal amusement to cheer 
the tedium of the hour ; I pray thee, Princess, pardon this 
informal and flustered introduction.” 

Whereat, she answered with a tone of soul-enchanting 
eloquence : Leah mondea morea sofella safee,” pointing 

to the lake and sky, more angelical than earthly. 

Whereupon, addressing my enchantress once again, I 
said : “ Is this wonderland, and art thou its queen?” 

When, in tone milder, if possible, than before, she 
replied, “ Leah mondea morea sofella safee.” 

Ah, what would I have not given to understand the pur- 
port of the mystic speech which I there heard, knowing full 


116 


LEAH, QUEEN OF WONDERLAND. 


well that it was no Indian dialect known to our Western 
border, much less a language of the pale faces known to 
civilized man. 

But again, attempting to fathom the mystery of the 
loveliness which stood before me, I sought an approach, 
saying, ‘‘Is thy home on the waters, or in the wood? Art 
thou mortal or mystic mistress of this realm? Speak, that 
I may understand, and worship thee.” 

Thereupon, she hastily raised the golden rope, stepped 
into her silvery canoe and shot from the shore like a startled 
swan, saying, “ Leah mondea morea sofella safee,” and 
waving adieu, that form of loveliness was lost forever to 
my mortal eye amid the gathering darkness settling on the 
lake so noiseless and so still. 

But to the eye of my soul she was not lost, for, amid 
varying vistas of golden shafted trees and lawns of green- 
est verdure, I fancied a throne was builded by the naiads 
of wonderland for this queen so graceful and so rare. 

Long I gazed on the lake and on the land for her 
return. And on the morrow I went in quest of inter- 
preter among the natives of that mountainous region to 
explain the meaning of the words which fell from the 
lips of that lovely queen, to me a riddle, and to them a 
superstition of awe which none could fathom. And, on 
recurring times, I visited that valley in quest of adventure, 
perchance again to find the fairy enchantress who spoke 
those words which stirred my soul, but in vain. I never 
beheld her more. 

I have fancied her queen of wonderland and named 
her “ Leah,” because of the soft sounding words which 
fell from her lips. And, ever and anon, as I wend along the 
sequestered lane of life, in quest of fair and favored mor- 
tals, there glides before my fancy the beautiful, mystified 


LEAH, QUEEN OF WONDERLAND. 117 

maiden, Leah, Queen of Wonderland, an image which I 
have worshiped with all the ardor of a rapt soul. And 
oft will arise the silent inquiry amid the far off flights of 
thought, “ Why doth the god of beauty show to mortals 
only such glimpses of a realm of grandeur, whose fair and 
shining ones are heavenly heralds of the soul’s pursuit 
after love, shadowed from the realm of their coming to 
the better nature of man?” Who shall answer? 


THE WHITE AVITCH OF THE 
MOUNTAINS. 


Many years ago, in the Wild West, it was my fortune 
to have been on an excursion and exploration tour in, over, 
round and about the Rocky Mountains. 

Being of a meditative mood of mind, it was my greatest 
delight to separate myself from all companions, at times, 
and select the wildest and most wonderful wastes, the 
grandest, most stupendous and towering mountain tops, 
the most secluded and silent recesses of nature, for my i*am- 
bling reveries. I loved the morning’s first approach and 
the eventide’s retiring day, in which to exercise the di- 
viner moods of mind that mountain scenery oft awakened 
in me. 

One morn, hours before light, I left the sleeping camp of 
my four companions and stole silently away to North 
Park, some three miles distant, to meander and meditate. 
Although the prospect of a lone journey three miles 
through the mountains before morn was not pleasant, still 
I held, and do now think, that the tourist loses much of 
the mild beauties of nature when he misses his musings at 
such hours. 

The eastern heavens were just aglow with the first ap- 
proach of the fair-faced Aurora as I reached my objective 
( 118 ) 


THE WHITE WITCH OF THE MOUNTAINS. 119 


point. First, 1 paused on a small elevation at the south 
■side of the Park and gazed with infinite satisfaction up- 
ward on the starry worlds, which seemed like shining- 
islands located in the shoreless ocean of space. The moon 
had passed beneath the horizon, which still held traces of 
her lingering light. From thence I wended through the 
oentre of the Park in a northeasterly direction; then, 
turning to the left, westwardly and south, I rambled and 
rambled, ruminating of the delicious richness of the realm 
-around me. 

Morn was nearing. I thought: “What a sheltered, 
-shaded retreat this spot of earth would be for a home! If 
no Indian molested, how happily two loving lives might 
be passed here in the rearing of a family that had never 
-been contaminated with the wdles of the world!” 

Thus I mused and meditated, when quite unexpectedly 
I beheld a mythical looking female, with a red tuiban 
wound about her forehead, a scarlet seeming shawl thi-own 
lightly over her shoulders; a dress of buckskin bedecked 
with stars and golden nuggets. 

She approached. I would have fled, but her keen, dark 
^ye was upon me. On second thought, why should I run? 
I was armed and out for adventure; and hero was an op- 
portunity to satiate my soul’s wildest wishes for romance 
with a living representation of iny mind’s ideality in that 
direction. But, when within two rods of me, instead of 
approaching nearer, she raised her white hand (for she 
was a white woman) cautiously and wafted me adieu. 
Turning suddenly to the right she began a walk, round 
find round, which terminated in the most wonderfully com- 
plex multiplicity of circlings that 1 had ever beheld, seem- 
ingly to no purpose. 

In mute amazement I beheld her while she still kept 


120 THE WHITE WITCH OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

wending, wandering and winding, round and round. I 
had heard of The WhiteWitch of the Mountains.” ‘‘ Can 
this be she?” thought I. I spake; she heeded not. I 
approached. She paused, raising a forbidding finger. I 
halted. Again she took up her windings; and again 1 
advanced a step or two. Again she halted, and with a 
defiant stamp of her foot wafted me away, and fled up the 
mountain side with the speed of the wind. Oh, fate of' 
fates! I’d driven her away; and my soul had learned to 
love her — or, rather, the mystery in which she was in^ 
volved. The vision of her star-bespangled dress; her 
glowing features, radiant as the rainbow, hid in a wavy 
net- work of curly, dark hair, strangely bewitched me* 
Lingering but a moment, I pursued; but not with the 
fleetness at which she had vanished. No untrained foot 
could have ascended that mountain height at the speed 
with which she went to its summit, and from thence out 
of sight like a flash. I gained the summit, but no vision 
of her was seen. I raised my voice, saying: “ I would 
not injure — come thou and talk with me.” 

The echoes of my own voice were all that broke the 
brooding stillness round. I wended some distance amid 
the mountain tops and crags, but could not find foot-print 
or form of my vanished enchantress. 

I returned to the Park below and lingered there for hours,, 
but she did not come. I wended back to camp, reaching^ 
the same when the clock was on the stroke of twelve. I 
told my experience. There was a Pawnee Indian and a 
white trapper among the number, and they each simulta- 
neously said: She is the White Witch of the Mountains,’^ 
and often has been seen wandering round and round, but 
never speaks to any one. No foot in these parts is fleet 
enough to find her burrow.” 


THE WHITE WITCH OF THE MOIJNTAINS. 121 


I went the next morning at the same iiour, and lingeied 
far past sunrise, but she came not. I repeated tliis sort of 
thing until nine fair morns had come and gone, but never 
saw her more. 

Ah, how often have I regretted that 1 did not let her 
finish her windings and wanderings undisturbed! For 
then she might have approached and given me, with her 
own voice, the notes of an immortal song. But lU}? act, 
in this regard, is much like man’s in all the affairs of life. 
He wants that which he has not, and soon wearies with 
that which he has. 

’ Tis my resolve, should I ever be permitted the pleas- 
ure of visiting the Rocky Mountains again, to make, un- 
attended, another morning ramble to North Park, with the 
hope of once again beholding the kindly features of “The 
White Witch of the Mountains,” whose mystic shadow is 
engraven on the mirror of my soul. 

Was she a reality, or an apparition from the realm of 
the wonder world? Time alone may untangle the deep^ 
perplexities of the problem. 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


Rome! 

At the mere mention of that word, what memories clus- 
ter around the student’s desk, suggesting at once the city 
of the Caesars, the mother of empires, the cradle of arts, 
and the mighty storehouse of human wisdom. The 
dreamings of fancy, the retrospections of memory, the 
mighty feats of the amphitheatre, and the mischiefs of 
maddened monarchs: all these remembrances and many 
more cluster around that doomed city, now desolate and 
dead in the dust of her greatness. All eyes are turned 
to her historic records searching for knowledge concerning 
the management of monarchies, aristocracies and repub- 
lics; and is it strange that we seek counsel of her who 
hath so influenced and shaped the destinies of mankind ; 
and, mayhap, to some extent, the duration of the world? 
Roman history is the grandest human record ever penned 
for the guidance of statesmen in governmental affairs. 
Then why may not all people and classes turn over those 
dust-brown leaves with interest and pursue its pages with 
profit? 

Gibbon, her greatest historian, may be studied by the 
most widely informed statesman with profit, from whence 
he may learn the wisest and most enlightened civil pol- 
icy. In the rise, progress and decline of her single state 
he traces the different workings of human government. 

( 122 ) 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


123 


The history of Rome teaches the statesman to feel that 
it is indeed “ dulce et decorum pro patria mori”; and 
from lessons of her worthiest citizens he is taught to emu- 
late the steady devotion of Camillus and the strict integ- 
rity of Cincinnatus. 

From the compilation of Rome’s laws down to her fall, 
no citizen of her extended empire ever bore a grievance 
which her courts were inadequate to redress, or ever 
refused to redress did he but submit to their jurisdiction. 

From the campaigns of the mighty Cassar and the bril- 
liant achievements of Anthony the soldier gains a profound 
knowledge of the art of war; while from the Pandects of 
Justinian the judge and jurist is imbued with the sound- 
est principles of law and equity to guide aright the civil- 
ian and soldier amid the vicissitudes of peace and war; 
while the poet in his unhampered imagination climbs Par- 
nassian heights in the companionship of her Virgil, where 
the Muses play around the purest fountains of the Heli- 
con. 

What a land for a dreamy, sentimental songster, this 
land of the seven wonders of the world was before the 
dim shade of adversity settled down on her effulgent 
brightness. What a realm Rome was in her palmy days 
for the votary of wisdom and the soft, admiring, dreamy, 
twilight eyes of Love to look upon; when her Tiber wafted 
the spotless breast of the swan ashore like ripples from a 
silvery lake, as some gondola aglow with an Italian sun- 
set went floating along, timed by the lover’s lute and 
watched by angel eyes. 

Here the Christian, side by side with the sandaled monk, 
looks with the keenest interest back, far back, into the 
shaded gloom of her history to find the angel foi'in of 
Religion standing amid the ruins of Rome with her bridal 


124 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


robes donned and sparkling like the dews of the morn- 
ing. Here he traces her as she emerges from the horrors 
of relentless persecution and bloodshed out of the dismal 
night of Paganism up to the dawning sunlight of efful- 
gent glory as the Gospel notes of the Son of God break on 
the world. 

There is hardly a virtue which has honored or a vice 
which has disgraced our human nature; hardly a charac- 
ter of manliness which commands our admiration, or in 
the depraved depths of its own malignity which receives 
our scorn, that has not its prototype in Rome. 

The enraptured soul of the divinely gifted artist, in his 
wildest flights of imagination, has never conceived images 
of more surpassing beauty or grandeur than those which 
glow with a God-like touch on the canvas of her painters, 
or become immortalities in marble by the chisels of her 
sculptors. The richest, rarest fancy that ever reveled in 
magnificent creations, aided by the divinity within, hath 
never builded in the regions of air, gilded domes, minarets 
or castles more supremely splendid than those which cov- 
ered the Palatine from the Capitoline heights overlooking 
august and imperial Rome in the days of her mightiness 
and her grandeur. On the pages of time’s record is found 
no picture so absorbing as the Mistress of the World pre- 
sents at the height of her power and the limitless latitude 
of her sway. 

Circumscribed within the limits of forty-eight miles was 
reared the city which Augustus “ found brick and left 
marble”; and concentrated there was the choicest treas- 
ures of all the civilized globe. Along its beautiful streets 
and walk- ways were builded palaces of imperial splendor; 
and from its heights rose temples, rare, magnificent, con- 
sisting of mosque and minaret, marble-domed, whose 


ROME AND HER OREATNESS. 


125 


spires gleamed with gold, sending a celestial sheen adown 
its long, lengthened defiles to dazzle the eye of the be- 
holder, no matter at what distance he might be approach- 
ing. Its altars bent beneath the weight of trophies, from 
the bow and arrows of the Scythian hunter to the gemmed 
and golden vessels of the Temple at Jerusalem. 

In every street, on every hill top, in each direction, 
were seen indications of wealth and grandeur. Here a 
towering archway, there a grand amphitheatre; here a 
commemorative pillar, there a triumphal column; here the 
arena where the gladiators met, and there where the sena- 
tors of Rome assembled to dictate their policy to the 
world. 

The population of Rome at times was turbulent and 
unj ust ; but they possessed two most noble characteristics — 
a lofty pride of citizenship which nothing could eclipse 
or subdue, and an energy which nothing could resist or 
daunt. 

From this regal centre; from this citadel of the seven 
hills; from this stronghold of creation; from this intel- 
lectual resort of culture, refinement, art, and indomitable 
obstinacy, the radii of her greatness penetrated all the 
world; Rome’s legions paraded in every land; the won- 
derful wisdom of her sages made her a forum of fame far 
renowned; the sword of her warriors opened the way for 
the use of her wisdom in the subjugation of crude Na- 
ture herself with the refining influence of education. 
When her soldiers triumphed they gave the codes of her 
jurists to the vanquished, and the religion of her divines 
to mankind. 

The causes of her downfall have been investigated and 
speculated upon by abler writers than I, whose attention 
has been occupied for generations. In determining the 


126 


HOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


real cause of her downfall and decay it would seem that 
but little reason is required. 

From the appearance of Romulus to the fall of Rome, 
her great concerns and affairs were managed and directed 
by that Unknown God to whom the altar of the Acropolis 
was ignorantly inscribed, in the fulfillment of whose pur- 
poses nations are but instruments and their lifetime as 
but a day. The power of Rome had banded as with a 
band of iron the nations together, so that their communi- 
cation and intercommunication was possible; she had 
made the distant near, and the mighty of other lands 
meek and submissive to the nod of her monarchs; for 
leaders, rulers and subjects everywhere paid adoration 
and homage to the mandates of her monarchs, and only 
now and then some desperate brigand or some renegade 
outlaw was foolhardy enough to assail her imperial poten- 
tates, or her impregnable fortresses and walls to reap the 
harvest of death as a result of his own rashness, by find- 
ing a grave of glory without her gilded gates. But time 
is the great leveler of all things; and she, too, had ful- 
filled her appointed days, and the stupendous fabric of 
her unmeasured greatness was tottering to its fall. The 
Cross swept on in the path of the Eagle; the trained sol- 
diers of Christianity were pressing to the point of death 
the legionaries of imperial Rome. 

In this city of the Cgesars were waged perhaps the most 
skillful intellectual contests that have ever been exhibited 
to the world from the stage of mind power. In this im- 
perial centre, fortified and fenced in by a wall of impreg- 
nable structure, some of the most astonishing athletic 
feats and physical performances have been entertained 
that have ever been held. Some of the most daring ex- 
ploits of venture in the pen where enraged animals were 


KOME AND HER GREATOESS. 


127 


goaded on to acts of frenzy by poisoned darts, hurled 
from hands arrayed against their lives, before the applaud- 
ing multitudes that oft assembled such sports to see;^ 
here the trained gladiators met for mortal combat where 
fair women and proud men were the auditors; and in this 
royal and magnificent city were ofttimes assembled the 
elite of life in the social circle, or at the grand ball where 
the revel and the dance flowed on unconfined till the 
morning mists veiled their forms before Aurora’s coming. 
Here the restless, swaying, pleasure-seeking throng would, 
under the mild evening starlight, go forth in quest of ad- 
venture through her crowded thoroughfares, or out beyond 
the city’s walks into the green fields of nature, smiling 
with the flower, the mistletoe and the creeping vine, those 
ornaments with which God has decked the world. Tho 
climate, the landscape and meandering rivers of that 
romantic region gave health, beauty and pleasure to the^ 
populace. 

And especially was the pleasure-seeker pleased with the 
scenes of that fallen empirage in the days of her great- 
ness and renown. Over that greatest of earth’s cities de- 
scended the gods of ancient fable in their strifes for the 
mastery of mortals engaged in warfare. Here many dei- 
ties were formed and worshiped, according to Roman my- 
thology; and Superstition oft, with her wild wonderments, 
led her train of goblins along under cover of her hills and 
the sable brow of Night. In this mighty city died many a 
hero for the faith of Christ and the freedom of the soul,, 
who lies forgotten amid her moldering ruins; and now the 
swaying winds waft a saddened requiem over desolate 
walks, which reach the antiquarian’s ear as he exhumer 
some relic of other days from her ruins. 

What numberless hosts have not been elated with 


128 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


ambition’s maddening thrill within her gates! What num- 
berless peasants, poor and forlorn, have not plied their 
daily care for food within her borders! And what a mul- 
titude of alms-askers have not thronged her thoroughfares 
in quest of some generous soul, begging for a farthing or 
a bit of bread to keep the body alive! What numberless 
myriads now sleep within her silent shades forgotten who 
were once animated with motions divine! 

Such is ruined Rome, buried in the tomb of her great- 
ness, silent in the shade of her shadow. 

But let us glance at the remains of the renowned city 
of antiquity as the traveler finds it to-day. Let us take 
our first look of its whole extent from the eminence of 
Albano, whose wooded heights makes this location at- 
tractive; for the hues of the varying foliage, bathed in the 
autumn’s haze, seem half heavenly. 

There on the right, upon the slope of the hill, stands 
the old Tusculum, while above and beyond it lies the site 
of Hannibal’s most celebrated Italian camp, whence the 
retreating general looked out for the last time on the rival 
of Carthage; and on the left the Campagna rises away, 
bare and unbroken, to Ostia, whose shadows mingle with 
the silvered sheen of the Mediterranean Sea. 

Farther on, almost hid in woods, lies Tivoli, with its 
valley gleaming like gold and glancing Cascatelles. Yon- 
der, on the plain below, stretches Lake Regillus, and just 
here beneath us lies the vast and varied plateau where the 
old city stood, strewn with “fallen column, capital and 
fane.” Yonder the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla rise 
massive in their molderings; and yonder the irregular 
arches of the Old Aqueduct run. In that field there 
stands the Tomb of the Scipios, “whose sacred urn contains 
no ashes now,” but the ground is sacredly remembered 


EOME AND HEK GEEATNESS. 


129 


by every Roman and honored by many tourists as a 
kind of holy enclosure; and yonder Oasis, amid the “ Des- 
ert of Ruin,” is the sacred and sanctified grove where 
Numa communed with his divine counselor. And the 
crystal waters of Egeria’s Silent Spring “ bubble from the 
base of the cleft statue.” Yonder round tower of other 
times, entwined with “three thousand years of ivy,” holds 
the urn of Cecilia Inetella; and away in the distance the 
pyramid of Caius Cestus appears, with well defined out- 
lines on the azure hue of the skies, which seems like a 
living language waiting for some master to read the record 
of the darkened, or the lightened, days when that stu- 
pendous work of art was builded, now effaced from the 
ledger of life by the dust of ages gone; and there lies 
Rome, with her crowded habitations and her moldering 
ruins; her towers and her temples; her bright spots and 
her shaded avenues; her green lawns and desolate door- 
ways; and yonder through her midst flows the flashing 
Tiber, like a thread of silver gleaming in the sunlight of 
a mid-summer’s day; and yonder rises Monte Vaticano 
heavenward, as if upheaved by Titan hands. 

This and much more breaks on the eye of the beholder 
to gladden, or to sadden, the soul, so near related to that 
greatness and that ruin. 

What a place for contemplation this renowned city of 
the fallen Caesars is! What a mute mightiness broods 
over this sleeping Mistress of the World! What a beau- 
tiful halo of supernal splendor the poetic soul sees in the 
great train of events which centre round this emporium 
through the shades and shadows of the entombed years, 
as at will he ranges in unrestrained ramblings through her 
walks and her wonders! Ah, yes! this silent city of the 
Orient furnishes food for thought inexhaustive and 
0 


130 


EOME AND HEE GEEATNESS. 


limitless to the most gifted mind power that the Eternal 
of Days ever concentered in matter. 

Rome is not a beautiful city, situated, as it is, in the 
midst of a barren and almost level campagna, whicli sur^ 
rounds it as a sort of seeming desolation. It is more 
beautiful viewed from the elevation from which we have 
looked down upon it than from any other point of the 
compass. Indeed, a bird’s-eye view of the city is always 
more attractive than an actual sight derived from a 
view of her ruins seen as one walks amid her entombed 
greatness, musing of the mighty masters who once thrilled 
the world with their eloquence and her fame. From a 
distance the traveler is favorably impressed with a kind 
of fancied glory that lights up her ruins; but as he enters 
the “ Eternal City ” he finds that the streets are dark 
and narrow, hardly better than what we call alleys in 
America. The houses are old and time-worn looking, 
and in certain parts of the city much filth abounds, show- 
ing that the city officials are lax and indolent so far as 
cleanliness is concerned. 

Like all capitals on the Continent, it has its great street, 
where may be seen its fairest stores, shops, wares, com- 
modities and merchandise. There may be seen at times 
its greatest concourse of people, promenading for profit 
or for pleasure. 

The great street of Rome is called the “ Corso,” and 
runs from the northern extremity to the foot of the Capi- 
toline Hill, paved with round stones, and has sidewalks 
only a part of the way. 

Through the morning and afternoon it is rather quiet, and 
viewed at such a time one could form but a faint concep- 
tion of the population; but as the sun is sinking, and the 
cool, revivifying breath of the perima sera, laden with 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


131 


freshness and perfumes from the Alban hills, fans the 
fevered brow expectant with the thrill of approaching- 
pleasure, and from the heights of Soracte pours onward a 
current of life which affords the curious a good opportu- 
nity for beholding the populace of Rome attired in fustian 
and in lace, in beaver and broadcloth, in jewels and in 
gems, in rags and in ribbons; they hustle and bustle along 
on foot and in grand equipages, with prancing steeds 
accoutered in shining plate, flashing back the sinking 
sun’s reflected rays like a halo of glory breaking round a 
tomb of gold. The tradesman who has plied his avoca- 
tion all day long in the spacious room or dingy den, now 
walks forth with the outlines of his pursuit plainly visi- 
ble to the expert beholder on his features. At this hour 
the beggars, numerous and motley, who have lain in the 
shade of some protection against the heat of the sun 
through the day, go forth to dog the steps of the passers- 
by until charity, as a virtue, seems to lose its dignity and 
become a necessity; for many a man and woman gives 
more to stop the wierd wailings, which grate harshly on 
the ear, than to satiate the thirstful wants of the dejected 
wanderer, who often might be something in the world if 
soap, sand and a little determination was deemed more of 
a requisite to success by that class who seem never to 
wish for a higher station in life than that of beggars when 
once they have become associated with such persons. 

On the steps of every temple of worship may be seen 
prostrate forms of the lower classes of the inhabitants 
bowed in the humblest attitudes, which often excites sym- 
pathy but seldom commands respect. Among those wor- 
shipful myriads may ever be found rare specimens of 
human misery which the philanthropic soul might gener- 
ously grieve over till its own glorious star of promise 


132 


EOME HEE GEEATIS'ESS. 


would the brighter grow in the constellation of the im- 
mortals. 

By far the greater number of worshipers are of the 
female class, which is true of Catholic and Protestant 
countries generally. 

In the church may be found, seeking spiritual comfort, 
the greater number of those who from the superior purity 
of their lives it would seem have the least need of the 
ministrations of the church. 

I don’t wish, however, to be understood as saying that 
all the devout followers of the Son of God are women; 
for many a true and manly man is building a mansion of 
glory for the habitation of the soul in that sun-land be- 
yond the tide; in that realm beyond the rest of death, 
where darkness broods like the ebon wings of night; in 
that haven of the hereafter where harps of holy chord and 
lutes of lisping love shall speed away the ritual of a 
deathless dawn. 

There often may be found in those worshiping assem- 
blages of earthly saints the lofty lady, made lofty by 
golden filigrees and laces, kneeling beside the humblest 
peasant, when the peasant’s title to that mansion in the 
skies is by far the better of the twain. Broadcloth doesn’t 
weigh in the scale where God’s executors adjudge as to 
what constitutes a proper passport into the city of the 
New Jerusalem. 

But from the altar let us hence to the Corso, which is 
alive with carriages and curricles of every shade, shape 
and description. 

From the entrance to every palace comes dashing a 
stylish equipage, with an accoutered coachman whose 
uniform shines like that of a field-marshal’s, attended by 
footmen pampered and fed like puppets for a fair’s day, 


HOME AIS^D HER GREATHESS. 


133 


and well trained in the art of politeness and palaver; on- 
ward go the royal roadsters at a brisk pace, with their 
driver and the lackies on the footboard ready to perform 
any feats of agility to please their proud possessors, who 
sit like earthly lords and ladies surveying the small fry 
swarming and floating round them like moths maddened 
by the source of the sunbeam which they never can find. 

In that grand equipage may ride a Cardinal who is 
wending his way to the Pope of Rome, whose mission is 
some mighty reform in church or state. 

Yon dorsky, drawn by four prancing dapple-grays, is 
the property of some Russian Princess on the parade for 
pastime. This low box of a carriage, so low that its floor 
is almost on a level with the street, rolling along with a 
kind of conscious comfort, is the Brougham of some for- 
eign millionaire. Yonder soiled and shaded hack is con- 
trolled by a party of Yankee boys, dressed in a sort of 
happy-go-lucky style, who feel as independent as any of 
Rome’s potentates, but not half so pompous in appear- 
ance; and yonder exquisite barouche, gilt with gold, be- 
fore which those six beautiful horses are curvetting and 
prancing beneath the crack of the driver’s whip, who is 
dressed in a jacket of softest silk and breeches of white 
enameled leather, cap banded with gold, postilion boots, 
and belt of bronze, belongs to the lady occupant of that 
princely family of Borghese, who is a model type of the 
female beauties of Rome. 

But the gratid equipages and vehicles of fashion and 
fineness which may be seen on the Corso upon any fine even- 
ing in the year, is too numerous for the writer to make par- 
ticular mention of in detail. Suffice it to say that every 
kind and description of a vehicle, from a painted coach 
down to the Mexican wooden ox-cart, may be seen ; and 


134 


KOME AIS^D HEE GEEATNESS. 


to the eye of a stranger the streets of Rome appear to 
contain every description of human personage who is 
possessed of more means than which may be found sufficient 
to keep the wolf from the door, with some sort of a roll- 
away giving rein to rackers on the drive. 

The object, no doubt, of the greater number who thus 
spend their evenings is to “ cut a swell ” in the fashiona- 
ble world, and ’tis better to be thus engaged than to bear 
a hand in some darker game of life where lust and love 
may lie. 

While this endless chain of rolling vehicles is whirling 
around the Coliseum, let us take a look at the vast 
assemblage of people who have met at the Piazza del 
Popolo to learn and discuss the news of the day. 

This Square of the People,” as it very properly haCs 
been called, is a sort of semi-circle of some extent, sur- 
rounded by beautiful and uniform buildings. At one 
end of the same, stand two elegant churches, which seem 
to have been designed by the same skilled architect on 
the same extensive plan; while at the other, opens one of 
the city’s most beautiful gates to the touch of those who 
lift its golden rod, which causes a sort of silver sounding 
to run adown the fane-like fancy work where its hinges 
are fastened; while at the other extremity, which is more 
central than those before mentioned, the three principal 
streets of Rome diverge in different directions. 

Amid this enclosure may be seen various sparkling 
fountains, decorated with statues of beautiful design; 
while in the centre towers an obelisk of darksome granite 
transported from the land of Egypt by Augustus and 
covered with unintelligible hieroglyphics, which are Greek 
to all save the disciples of Champolion. 

This great square is a very fashionable, and a very 


EOME.AIN^D HEE GEEATNESS. 


130 


oinfashionable resort, both for the refined and for the rustic 
classes of Rome. Here, as in the assemblages of the Corso, 
may be seen all shades of manhood and of womanhood, from 
the highest to the lowest types of Oriental lands. Here may. 
be seen well-dressed business men, sometimes with their 
families and sometimes without them, strolling leisurely 
for ejoyment around the enclosure, courteous and kindly 
disposed. Here saunter saintly priests clad in their 
•clerical robes, shaven and shorn like Simon Simpleton 
of other times; while now and then may be seen “Ven- 
erable Padres,” who are begged by many for a blessing 
almost at every step. Here too may be seen numberless 
students of the Propaganda, clad in black gowns with 
silken head-dresses, representatives of various nations. 
One may see pilgrims of Mahomet’s hegira still journey- 
ing to the sacred Mecca of the church, with scallop, staff, 
shell, and sandals, which indicate a journey from some 
distant province of Arabia, for the gratification of the 
faithful, and the satisfaction of their caliph, through 
whose instrumentality may be gained the grace of God 
and the favor of the black-eyed nymphs, or heavenly 
houris of paradise, with which the Moslems have peo- 
pled it. 

Monks, maidens, mischief-makers, move mutely on, unc- 
tuous and odoriferous, attractive and repulsive, winsome 
and wicked, worshipful and worldly, all are out and on 
the parade. Campagna Herdsmen, long, lank, and lean 
-embodiments of human wretchedness, are there waiting 
and wondering like the rest. Mountaineers of Albano, 
aglow with health and possessing that ruddy, open ap- 
pearance of countenance which always impresses one so 
favorably, whether at home or abroad, and which we meet 
with in every crowd as we go journeying the world around. 


136 


EOME AISTD HEE GEEATNESS. 


Rare models for the sculptor, these hardy Mountaineers 
from Albano are arrayed in costumes peculiar to their 
calling, with steeple-crowned hats of white felt and tastily 
tricked off with changeable ribbons, short pantaloons of 
corduroy, unbuttoned at the knee, with crimson sash about 
their waists, and shoes shining brightly with silver buckles,, 
and shirt collars tastefully turned over their broad shoul- 
ders, shows them off to a very marked advantage amid all 
this wild unrest of nature’s pedestrians, on the parade for 
pleasure within the Eternal City of the Caesars, at that 
hour when the last lingering rays of the receding sun gild 
dome and minaret with liquid loveliness under Italian 
skies. 

Such a scene seems seraphic; and do not those flashes 
of resplendent glory which break out of the fleecy clouds 
hovering above this scene of animation, which are reflect- 
ed from the earthly sun’s rays mingling with the light of 
the eternal sheen, shadow forth to man somewhat of the 
greatness and the grandeur of the city built beyond the 
Dorder of that darkly flowing Jordan which awaits wan- 
derers for passage thence? Do not the rebuilding of 
Rome’s gates and palaces on the grave of her greatness 
shadow forth that life principle of immortality within the 
breasts of her founders which is above decay and death? 
And does not the onward march of Time moving amid her 
moldering columns and castles built in Caesar’s day, move 
mightily the memory of the student of nature, or the his- 
torian, as he stands amid the ruins of fallen Rome, as he 
pens undying leaflets for the reading of future ramblers 
to the silent realm of reposing greatness? 

Ah, indeed was Rome great! And indeed is she great 
to-day, sitting as she does on the silence of the greatest 
glory and grandeur, gone back to earth, that the world 


HOME AKD HEE GEEATOESS. 


137 


has ever seen in any of its great and heroic stages. It 
seems like wending amid the walks of wisdom closed by 
some eternal fiat or decree, to stroll in meditative mood 
through Rome’s gateways on a ramble of rest; to con- 
template, e’en though feebly it be, the dim outlines of her 
entombed greatness; the dead silence of her death reign 
the sightless stillness of her seeming solemnity, and the 
brooding monody of her ancient mirth, madness and 
mightiness, as one rests on some reclining marble mon- 
ument the better to hear the deep silence of her breath- 
ing, buried in the dust of the crumbled couch on which 
she reposes. 

Little doth that person understand the moods of the 
soul and the master emotions of the mind who has never- 
found food for thought where such ruins lie. Feebly is 
the immortality within stirred at the monody of rural life 
when compared with the wild surges of the soul as its pos- 
sessor stands amid the ruins of Rome; such scenery and 
surroundings will cause it to long for an escape from the 
prison house of its detention and join the deathless dura- 
tion of the dimmed glory in which her heroes live and 
move, though the habiliments of mortality which they 
wore have long since gone to form the mud which cements 
Rome’s marble mansions, or the grassy lawns which lie so 
green around her amber lighted sepulchres. 

The traces of time, that mighty leveler of all things, 
may be plainly tracked round and about the ruins of 
Rome ; this agent of demolition and reconstruction is 
ever at his work ; pulling down, building up, year in,, 
year out, he follows his ceaseless toil ; through summer’s 
heat, and through winter’s cold ; up the hill, and down 
the hill ; at the dawning, and at the darkening, his busy 
fingers work while we are sleeping, and while we are- 


138 


KOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


waking his horologe runs on. He buildeth monuments, 
and demolishes domes. He reaps the ripened grain, 
and cuts down the green with the same sickle ; never 
Testing, but always ranging over flowery ground, when 
flowers are in sight, and swans are at play ; changing 
life, changing death, changing nature, and changing des- 
tiny, bent and bearded though he be ; too ancient 
looking for love to lisp his praise ; too relentless for man 
to baffle, and too skilled for cunning to curb. Thus goes 
Time treading on, looking, peering and veering round 
the round world, as well as the ruins of Rome ; waiting 
to make or to mar, as the needs of the hour seem to 
require. The centuries have seen him at his work, 
never flagging, never lagging, always abreast of the times. 

Sorrowing and silvering as he goes, 

The heart with grief, and the head with snows. 

Nowhere better than in this city of the ages, may be 
seen plainly marked the course of this ancient patriarch 
in his ceaseless walks, where man moves, and mold 
makes the mound. There are time-tattered temples yet 
visible in Rome, which one would think had resisted his 
ravages long, and might outlive his lengthened span, 
but no ; mud and marble must be moved by his might, 
for the eternal morrow’s merry-making farther on. And 
how soon a life is past ; how soon a city dies, and how 
soon Time dims the golden urn ; how soon the crowns of 
monarchs are handed round from one to another in that 
play where Destiny deals out dangers to empires and 
to kingdoms. What seems eternal here holds no dura- 
tion lease whose’ seal secures any lengthened tenure from 
Time, for he is a relentless landlord, taking cereal and 
•<5ereal tender, the same. The stars shine in the azure 


EOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


139 


•skies after nightfall sets in ; the rivers run onward to the 
ocean; the seas send their sheen ahead, and silver in the 
moonlight with shimmering softness amid the low mur- 
muring breezes of heaven, which blow a bloom to the 
oheek from the land of health that one would think could 
never fade. But these things shall change, for walketh 
^though unseen he be) by the side of every bloom and of 
every beauty, this same ancient monarch called Time, 
culling the fairest fruit, and making up his list of mova- 
bles ready for silent transportation thitherward whene’er 
the mystery of his mind shall give the mandate out. 

The Italians, like the French people, are lively and 
mirth-loving. Especially is this true of the inhabitants of 
Naples, Florence, Milan and Venice; but at Rome there 
is a kind of melancholy reserve, an inate dignity of 
demeanor, and an air of silent sorrow which is striking in 
the extreme. They seem like a people bound down 
^neath the weight of some former sorrow, or of some past 
calamity, the shade of whose shadow still saddens the 
soul; and it is only upon rare occasions that they. are 
stirred to an extravagance of mirth and merry-making, 
such as the Carnival, or the Holy Week, which they 
observe so punctually. 

Travelers are loth to account for this quite perceptible 
difference in the same climate, with reference to the man- 
ner in which that Eastern people conduct themselves. 
May we not, however, account for it on the theory that 
there still ebbs in the veins of the people some of the old 
Roman blood which moved the masters of the world to 
those sublime deeds of daring, which startled the civilized 
globe, when Rome was at her zenith of glory and re- 
nown ? The memory of what she once was and the 
realization of what she is now, casts a sort of somber 


140 


EOME Al^B HER GEEATISTESS. 


shadow over the souls of her sons. Could it reasonably 
be expected that such a people would forget the greatness 
of their ancestors’ deeds and daring in the frivolities of 
later life? Fallen greatness is a famishing feast to the 
body and a cruel fetter to the soul, and no son of woman 
born (if he be a man) loves to rest in leisure and lesser 
greatness than the parentage who begat him. Therefore, 
when we reflect, it is not strange that there is this marked 
contrast between the people of Rome and the inhabitants 
of the Italian climate generally. 

It is true that to-day the traveler may see in Rome 
beautiful villas, parks of noble trees with fleet footed 
deer chasing through their green depths, aviaries filled 
with birds of varying plumage and of every variety of 
hue; verdant lawns with fountains jetting up sparkling 
water; lovely walks, shaded from the noontide sun by the 
interlaced branches of the pine, laurel and the cypress, 
with statues at regular intervals amid the shrubberies,, 
silvered and soft of that Italian clime; mimic theatres, 
beautiful domes, endless labyrinths, fairy bowers decked 
with golden, glowing tapestry; beautiful gardens, and 
golden, gilded grottoes; swans at play on silvered waters,, 
and green o’erhanging arches which reflect the liquid blue 
of the Eden beyond. But amid it all there lies those 
ancient ruins — fragment of crumbling wall and torn tem- 
ple, tower defaced where the twining vine seems creep- 
ing cautiously over its crumbling greatness; some sil- 
vered urn, despoiled by time, which holds the mortal 
remains within the shaded cemeteries of the mighty fallen 
in the fetters of fated Rome. 

These are sorrowful spectres to the sons of Rome, which 
daily cast their deadening blight from infancy to age on 
their souls. It has been said bv those who have made 


KOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


141 


reliable research in and about the ruins of Rome, that 
many, very many, of her truly Roman sons, since the 
decline and fall, have sought asylums in other lands to be 
relieved from the pain of looking on the dim death-walks 
of their fathers and the shrouded greatness of their 
^lory. Such is the human make-up, and is it any wonder 
that it should be so? Nay, is it not rather a commenda- 
ble trait of character? For what son can better reflect 
than on the virtues and the vanities of ancestry gone ; of 
a powerful race swept to the abodes of the past, pulseless 
particles of a painless peace? 

But let us slowly wend our way towards St. Peter’s, 
viewing the scenes as we go; for he who visits Rome 
without viewing St. Peter’s, misses half the benefits 
derived from a perusal of his sketch-book, when he 
returns to the quiet of his country to reflect over the 
splendors of castles, old in story, which he has seen 
abroad. 

From the Villa Borghese one must traverse a greater 
portion of the city in order to come in near proximity to 
St. Peter’s dome. 

As he crosses the Tiber by the JElian bridge, the first 
object of note which falls upon his view is the Castle of 
St. Angelo, the present prison-house of Rome, which was 
builded by the Emperor Hadrian, and was originally de- 
signed as a resting place for the distinguished dead. It 
is of circular formation, about two hundred and twenty feet 
in diameter, and rests upon huge rocks of Peperino stone. 
It was changed to a fortress or prison-house during the 
siege of Rome by the Goths in the year 537. Some con- 
siderable alterations have since been made during the 
pontificates of Urban and of Alexander in surrounding it 
with a deep ditch, and in surmounting it with a brick 


142 


ROME A^J) HER OREAIWESS. 


superstructure. During Holy Week this fortress of St^ 
Angelo is made memorable by the grand display of fire^ 
works which usually takes place on the Monday night 
succeeding Holy Friday, as a sort of purifying sanctifica- 
tion to the heavenly work in hand. At these Pyrotechnic 
displays an immense concourse of people line the oppo- 
site bank of the Tiber, where houses are decorated and 
lighted from parapet to basement, stages are erected in 
the centre of grand squares, boats are seen upon the 
waters, and many a shift and device is resorted to in order 
to accommodate the curious (always at a good round 
price), whether transient or permament citizens of the 
place. Crowds collect about dusk, of all shades and ad- 
mixtures, in order to get a favorable location from which 
to view the grand display. Patricians fill the balconies 
of the neighboring houses; bridges are filled with specta- 
tors; sills and railings, balustrades and bindings are filled 
with animation and merriment, while uniformed footmen 
in front move rapidly along to enforce order armed with 
bayonets, and swordsmen mounted like cavalry close up 
the rear. 

All eyes are watching the black mass of the Vatican 
Palace, from whose towers is to come the grand display 
of fireworks. 

Instantaneously the glare of a rocket lights up the dome 
of St. Peter’s, then another and another in rapid succes- 
sion, followed by the roar of the deep-mouthed cannon, 
which shakes the foundations of Rome; while from the 
bosom of the castle ascends lighted balloons, thirty or forty 
in number, followed by hosts of rockets scattering stars 
like a shower of gold, which is followed by a grand illu- 
mination produced by thousands of shooting rockets in a 
single discharge, designed to represent an eruption of 


ROME AIN'D HER GREATNESS. 


143 


Vesuvius; and then for almost an hour follows an infinite 
variety of girandoles, whirling wheels, shooting stars, em- 
bracing almost all the combinations of Pyrotechny, form- 
ing a display of unparalleled splendor, which it is well 
worth five years of life to behold. The whole castle is 
wrapped in a shroud of densest smoke at times, as if the 
fiends kept holiday on earth, while from the bosom of 
which may be heard deep thunders from the resounding 
cannon, as a grand outbreak of flashing fire, licking the 
ethereal dome of heaven in its madness, lights up the dis- 
tant cross of St. Peter’s and the crowded Palace of the 
Vatican. 

The grand display concludes with a glorious sheet of 
flame sweeping upward along the whole front of the cas- 
tle, bursting like a shower of glittering diamonds on 
bridge and bank of the river below, lighting old “ Father 
Tiber ” with the hues of a resplendent sunset. 

In pursuing our walk about a quarter of a mile farther 
on we reach the commencement of the Piazza of St. Pe- 
ter’s, at the end of which stands the church, which is 
nearly the same distance still farther on. There are, prop- 
erly speaking, three piazzas, the first being very nearly 
square, about two hundred and forty feet in length; the 
second elliptical, some five hundred and fifty feet in 
length by some five hundred and ten feet in breadth; and 
the third is quadrangular in shape, which grows gradually 
broader as it approaches the church, and is some three 
hundred feet in length and three hundred and sixty in 
breadth. The central one is called the “ Piazza of St. Pe- 
ter’s,” and is beautiful and magnificent, inlaid with broad,, 
flat stones, bounded on either side by a sort of semi-ellip- 
tical colonnade, supporting two hundred and eighty-four 
large doric columns, which form a triple portico on each. 


144 


EOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


side of the piazza, the central one of which being wide 
enough for two carriages to pass abreast. The colonnade 
is sixtj^-seven feet high by a breadth of fifty-six, while rest- 
ing on the entablature is a balustrade, ornamented with 
two hundred statues, each one of which is eleven and one* 
half feet in height, making a very imposing array. In the 
centre stands an obelisk of red Egyptian granite, imported 
from Egypt by Caligula. It was erected at Heliopolis by 
^ son of Sesostris, and is among the finest of its kind in 
Europe. It is one hundred and thirty feet in height; and 
it required forty- one machines, which the celebrated Fon- 
tana devised, in order to raise it from the earth, the power 
of which were all applied at the same time by eight hun- 
dred men and one hundred and sixty horses, the comple- 
tion of which required eight days, while it took the same 
force four months to transport the obklisk three hundred 
paces. 

Upon either side of this work of art is a beautiful fount- 
ain throwing a jet of water some fifteen feet high, clear 
and lucid as the ambient crystal; they are of the same 
uniform structure and forty feet high. The circular basins 
into which the falling water descends are of Oriental 
granite and finely finished. 

Upon each side of the piazza, terminating the colonnades, 
is a gallery, the length of which is three hundred and 
ninety feet, leading to the vestibule of the church, to gain 
which you ascend a fine flight of stairs. Its length is four 
hundred and seventy-five feet, its breadth forty, and its 
height sixty-seven. 

The facade of the church is 396 feet in width and 159 high, 
ornamented with four pilasters and eight Corinthian col- 
umns, each of which is eight feet in diameter and eighty- 
five feet high. On the top is a balustrade which supports 


ROME AND ITER GREATNESS. 


145 


thii;teen colossal statues representing Christ and the 
Apostles, each figure being seventeen feet high. 

From this description of the outer details let us turn to 
the contemplation of the gigantic proportions and grand- 
ness of the interior of this magnificent edifice so famed in 
history. 

It is in form like that of a Latin cross, and is 722 feet in 
length; its width in the transept of the cross is 455 feet, of 
the body of the church, 130 feet. The width of the nave, 
exclusive of the two side aisles, is ninety-five feet, and its 
height is 200; there are four arches through the walls of 
the nave which lead into the aisles; between each arch are 
two fluted Corinthian pilasters eighty feet in height; be- 
tween the pilasters are two niches, containing each a mar- 
ble statue more than twelve feet high, while above each of 
the arches is a niche filled with a statue twenty-four feet 
in height. The pavement is that of marble; the vault of 
the nave is covered with gilding. The aisles lead to four 
magnificent chapels on each side, surmounted with cupolas, 
which are emblazoned with rare and precious stones, 
while between these chapels are monuments erected in 
honor of departed Popes, magnificent in design, and as 
finely ornamented as the art of beauty can suggest. The 
cherubs which support the basins of holy water at the base 
of the two first pilasters are ten feet in height, while the 
pen in the hand of the Evangelist St. Mark, in the niche 
above, is eight feet in length. The baldachino, or canopy, 
which stands just beneath the dome and over the high 
altar, is formed of gilded bronze, and is supported by 
four spiral pillars, and cost $114,000. It is said that 
the gilding upon it cost $45,000. 

Just in front of the baldachino is a small chapel, open 
from above, into which you may descend by a flight of 
lO 


146 


ROME AND HER GREATNESS. 


steps, where, according to tradition may be seen the 
burial place of St. Peter. The sides of this chapel are 
inlaid with gold, gems of every description, and precious 
stones, polished and peerless. Before the sacred shrine 
within this sacred place is a colossal statue of ‘‘ Pius the 
Sixth,” by Canova, the celebrated sculptor and artist. 
About the railings which surround the chapel are taste- 
fully arranged 112 gilded lamps of very great size, which 
are kept constantly burning. 

To the right of the nave, and near the cupola, is a 
bronze statue of St. Peter, seated beneath an overspread- 
ing canopy, whose subdued hue and mildness is like the 
floor of heaven, transparent and golden. This statue is 
an object of very great reverence, and no good Catholic 
passes it without going through the usual formula pre- 
scribed by priestly tenets, which is to stop and kiss the 
foot two or three times, in the mean time pressing the 
forehead against it between each salutation. 

Beyond the dome stands the tribune, which has a semi- 
circular form. Here, upheld by four colossal doctors of 
the Church (whose figures are eighteen feet high, com- 
posed of bronze), is the seat which tradition asserts was 
used by St. Peter himself. It is composed of wood, taste- 
fully ornamented with ivory and gold; while just above 
it are four large angels, two of which support a crown, 
while still higher up are glorious representations of lesser 
cherubim. The whole of this fabric is bronze, obtained 
from the Pantheon at a very great expenditure of wealth 
and time. 

But behold the dome of St. Peter’s, which causes the 
world to wonder and artists to study its architectural 
design. From the pavement of the nave to the top of 
the cross it is in height 458 feet; its internal diameter 


KOME AND HER GREATNESS. 


147 


is 140 feet, while the four immense columns which support 
it measure in circumference 240 feet, and arise to a height 
of 178. 

There it stands, a vast circular archway, like the bend- 
ing heavens, over the astonished beholder, traversed by 
many galleries, decorated with gigantic statues, and 
emblazoned with a golden finish. One who has never 
seen it can but feebly imagine the reality which beams 
and breaks upon the beholder. 

But why attempt to adequately describe >it? St. Peter’s 
is simply indescribable by pen of mortal. The lavish 
wealth of the interior is almost incredible and beyond 
calculation. The paintings in mosaic, of which twenty-nine 
may be seen, one over each of its altars, cost twenty-two 
thousand dollars apiece; making in the aggregate the sum 
of six hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars. Besides 
these statues there are relievos, precious stones, rare mar- 
ble, costly altar furniture, gilded and bronze statuary, 
which make up an enormous aggregate of wealth. There 
is concentrated the glory and the pride of Rome to the 
modern traveler and the romantic tourist. 

These details doubtless will assist us in forming some 
relative opinion of the magnitude and magnificence of St. 
Peter’s; but then, little idea of its greatness or of its 
grandeur may be had except by those whose good for- 
tune permits them to behold it in all of its pristine glory, 
and to walk its marble naves, to survey its gorgeous chap- 
els, to look up to its glowing vault, to gaze, spell-bound, 
upon its colossal monuments and gigantic statues, and to 
witness the sacred pomp of its ceremonials, its rites and 
its rituals, and to hear the peals of its numerous organs 
resounding like the harmony of Milton’s heaven through 
its overshadowing dome. 


148 


ROME A1S[D HER GREATNESS. 


At all times those who are permitted to worship beneath 
its roof, present a spectacle of picturesque beauty; but to 
behold its votaries assembled on Easter Sunday, when the 
Great Head of the Church ministers in person from its 
High Altar; when the sides of the Tribune are built with 
stagings and draped with cloth that seems of gold, 
adorned with orders and crosses; when the columns which 
support the dome are hung with draperies of deep scarlet, 
and the body of the vast edifice is thronged with curious 
thousands, composed of all kinds and classes who meet 
before its altars in the reverent attitude of prayer, and 
walk its broad aisles, while up the long nave between files 
of soldiers goes the great procession of cardinals and priests 
and of churchmen, arrayed in every variety of costume, 
bearing the Pope on their shoulders, who sits upon his 
throne with a star-lit canopy above him of the richest 
tissue, while on either side appears a fan of beautiful 
ostrich feathers, set in gold, with the assembled thousands 
kneeling around. 

It is only on such occasions that the beholder is im- 
pressed with the wonderful magnificence of St. Peter’s. 

But while this great temple with its mighty magnitude 
commands our admiration, its history is replete with 
the greatest interest. It is builded upon the site of the 
foulest scenes that ever disgraced the annals of Rome; 
the very soil in which its foundations rest is wet with the 
blood spilled from the bosoms of its earliest martyrs, of 
men valiant and mighty, who, amid the crazed cries and 
cheers of the crowded circus, and by the fangs of infu- 
riated beasts, testified with their lives as to the reality of 
the Gospel of Christ. 

Successive generations through the lapse of three and 
a half centuries, amid the fall of empires, the birth of 


ROME AND ITER GREATNESS. 


149 


dynasties and the progress of revolutions, this gigantic 
mass arose stone by stone and column after column into 
the air, at an expenditure of which no authentic record 
remains. 

Wonderful work of art; glorious execution of a shapely 
design, w^hich reflects in miniature something of the great- 
ness of the fabric its votaries have erected in imagination 
for the souls of the faithful and the saints of God to wor- 
ship in beyond the river of death, where the delectable 
hills arise in all their pristine beauty, which no pen may 
porti’ay or human fancy describe. Wonderful structure; 
towering and majestic work of art, which is a witness of 
the ability of man’s conceptions and his skill of another 
and former age. Where, indeed, may a greater be found 
on this sphere, unless it be that of the pyramids? But 
while the pyramids may have required the appliance of 
more mechanical skill in their erection, there is no such 
delicacy of touch and supernal grandeur to be seen 
about them as about St. Peter’s dome. How many rapt, 
enthusiastic followers of the Pope have looked down 
through the ages upon the vestibule of St. Peter’s, as a kind 
of celestial doorway leading to the dome of heaven; how 
many priests pressed in sectarian rites and robes of text- 
ure so stiff as not to bend, and shod in sandals whose soles 
never pressed unholy ground (as they are wont to believe) 
have flocked thitherward, penniless and poverty-stricken, 
to gain one soul-satisfying sight of the temple of God on 
earth and bow within its sacred precincts. How many 
self-inflicted torments have been imposed by votaries who 
have thither wended to partake of the broken body of 
Christ and drink of his blood, in that venerated spot sanc- 
tified by religious observances, where the sighs of expiring 
saints have gone floating home to heaven down through the 


160 


HOME AIS^D HER GREATNESS. 


ages; that temple of temples dedicated to God by the 
death of so many martyrs, the brightness of whose vest- 
ures hath been dimmed with the blood of their dying in 
that agony of soul for the salvation of thrfeir tormentors, 
which none but those know who alone can realize the ter- 
rible doom of the damned. How many venerable 
popes have ministered from the high altar of St. Peter’s 
since St. Peter has fallen to sleep within its sanctified 
chapel; and how many sorrowing but hopeful mothers and 
sisters have joined the pilgrim wanderers and journeyed 
here to obtain a refreshing from the showers of heavenly 
grace which fall so bountifully in those sacred precincts. 

Ah! ’tis impossible for the beholder of to-day to forget 
all, all this, and look upon simply the outlines of that 
wonderful structure undetached from the historic scenes 
which arise around it. As well might one look upon the 
tomb of a loved one and believe that a clod of cold dirt 
rests there, instead of the peaceful slumbers of an im- 
mortal soul, or one to look on the cross on which the King 
of Glory died, and forget that the Redeemer ever lived. 

There is a history, the world’s history, which surrounds 

This venerable pile 
Of brick and tile, 

On which the angels 
Of Heaven smile ; 

And where the gods look down, 

When there’s a new Pope to crown, 

With sacred cross and silver gown. 

Leaving St. Peter’s, with all its surroundings, its asso- 
ciations, and its grand glory, let us take a parting retro- 
spect of the city of the Caesars, entombed in their mortal 
resting places; waiting in that. state of seeming inactivity 
until the shadows are longer grown, and the silver notes 


I 


ROME AMD HER OREATMESS. 161 

of a celestial trump shall call them home to a city whose 
builder and maker is God, and whose eternity is estab- 
lished. 

On that resurrection morn, amid the multitudes assem- 
bled for enrollment for citizenship in that City of the 
Skies, no prouder specimens of manhood shall stand forth 
than those who performed such a conspicuous part in the 
^reat tragedy of the downfall of Rome; but how many of 
those shall pass muster and be permitted to enter heaven 
we must wait for the crowning day to determine. At all 
events, the heirs of Rome stand out in the world’s history 
most conspicuous in the development and display of 
that sublime element of manhood which moved them with 
such an enthusiastic thrill of energy and daring in the 
days of her greatness. 

There are brave men in Rome to-day, but none so 
brave as the masters fallen; there are devoted women, 
whose hands are training the tendrils of their loins for 
future rulers, but none so Mary-like as the mothers who 
have fallen asleep since the masters went away. 

The downfall of Rome, and her history, belongs to an- 
other age, and he who would make it as of this doeth not 
well. The past of that mighty city is more mighty than 
her present to all minds; the fame of her fallen heroes 
more eternal than that of her living sons. 

What may be the future history of this world-renowned 
city I know not; but it is hardly presumable that she will 
ever again attain to her former greatness, or that any of her 
sons will thunder from her senate chamber, or her forum, 
such burning words of eloquence as the fallen mighty 
utttered who now slumber in the silent peace of death be- 
neath her moldered urns and monuments defaced by the 
lingers of Time. In what age of the world’s history did 


162 


ROME AJSTD HER OREATOESS. 


live so many gifted men as in that of Caesar and Brutus? 
Romulus the first Emperor of Rome, with his contempor- 
aries, laid broad and deep the foundation walls of that 
infant city whose fame was destined to command the at- 
tention of the world; and many an envious ruler longed to 
occupy the gilded chair of state which its founder first filled. 
Shortly the fame of that empire congregated thither the 
elite of the earth, the most immortal of mortals, the most 
godlike of mankind; but with all this brilliant array of 
intellect she fell — and what a fall! She fell to her mother 
earth, thus presaging the doom of mortals and the earthly 
end of all greatness; but beyond may we not finish the 
half-finished fabric of fame which we leave unfinished 
here? 




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